Jamie was tired. Tired and sick. He sat on the edge of the fallen log and gouged chunks of moss-covered bark from the rotting tree with his tiny pocketknife. He stabbed the little folding knife into the punky bark and sat back, staring at it, shaking his head. What do I do? That’s what I want to know. What do I do now?
This is pathetic, he thought, sitting here on this log feeling lost and alone. So many other people have things so much worse. Real problems: handicapped children, debt, or abject moral failures that got them sent off somewhere to be “fixed” and here I am falling apart over, what exactly?
Scheduling conflicts? Not enough time? An unhappy wife? Feeling like my own children are strangers? A sporadic devotional life?
Why do I always feel like I am walking into the house only to walk out again? Why does my wife look at me like that? With that undefinable disappointment?
I should go see Uncle Todd, he thought suddenly. He reached over and pulled the knife from the damp bark and snapped it shut.
He stood, shoving his knife into his pants pocket, and started toward the trail.
****
“Jamie.”
Uncle Todd’s wrinkled face was creased with smile lines. “I’m so glad you came, do come in.” He stepped back holding the door and Jamie stepped in, inhaling the comforting smell of herbs drying in the timber-frame rafters, mingled with a trace of hickory smoke and the warmth of fresh cornbread. He could feel his shoulders relax at the peace of the place.
“So what is it?” Uncle Todd’s face was concerned.
Jamie sighed and rubbed his hands over the uppercut front of the Windsor chair he sat on. He looked at Uncle Todd perched on the block of wood then down at the jack-planed floor then back at Uncle Todd.
“I just can’t do it.” He said it apologetically.
“Can’t do what exactly?”
“Life,” he said. “No, I mean, relationships. I can’t do relationships. I can’t reach around. There is not enough of me to go around. I just can’t do it.”
“Hmm . . .” Uncle Todd nodded, his brow furrowed and eyes sympathetic. “That’s tough.” He nodded and looked up at a bunch of fennel drying in the overhead beams, running a hand through his beard. “Quite tough actually. Even if it isn’t totally true, it’s a tough perspective to live with.” He nodded again. “So, is it mostly a time problem or is it deeper than that?”
“Well, initially I thought it was. If I just had a few more hours in a day . . .” He gave a sheepish grin. “You know, that sort of wishful thinking.”
He shook his head and scuffed his boot on the floor planking. “But now . . . now I don’t know. Maybe it’s more than that too.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, my wife seems so unhappy. Disappointed in me somehow. And the children, they almost act like they’re not sure what to do with me when I’m around. I notice they tend to ask their mom about everything even when I’m there. She tends to point them to me and half the time I don’t know what the context is.” He shook his head, his knuckles white where they were wrapped over the front of the chair seat.
Uncle Todd nodded then looked out the window at the tree tops swaying below.
“Have you ever bounced a check?”
“What . . .? Oh yeah, not recently, but yeah.”
“How’d that happen?”
“Well, you know, took too much out, didn’t put enough in, wasn’t paying attention. Poor financial stewardship, the common reasons.”
Uncle Todd nodded. “What’d you do about it?”
“I found the money somewhere else and paid it. Then,” he grinned, “I had to go on a budget, or it would have been more of the same.”
“Did you . . . did you ever bounce a relational check?”
“A what?”
“A check is just a promise to pay. Did you ever bounce a promise to pay, relationally? A time when someone had a reasonable expectation that you would be there for them and for some reason or other you didn’t come through?
Jamie looked up, biting his lip. “Yeah, happens all the time. Every day it seems.”
Uncle Todd nodded slowly. “So . . . if you think of those as relational checks. Checks that don’t pay out. What do you think that is doing to your relational credit score?”
Jamie looked down, tracing the edge of his boot along the plane track in the floor. Finally, he looked up, his eyes full of pain, and said, “Maybe . . . maybe I’m pushing bankruptcy?”
Uncle Todd nodded. “At the very least, we need to stop those checks from bouncing and start building a working reserve.”
“How do we do that?”
“In finances we must use management to properly steward the resources God has given to us. It’s the same in relationships.”
“What?” Jamie looked up
“Relationships must be stewarded. In fact, they are the most important thing we steward.”
Uncle Todd stood. “Come with me. I have something I want you to see. Do you have time for a hike?”
“All I care about is finding some answers. I’ll hike the Appalachian Trail if it will supply some.”
“We’re not going quite that far. Just over the ridge.”
“Ok, let’s go.” Jamie stood. “I’m ready.”
They crested the ridge, pausing to look down over the beautiful valley before descending into the trees again.
Another ten minutes of walking and Jamie heard the sound of running water.
They rounded the bend and Jamie paused. “Wow,” he said. “This is gorgeous.” He stood under a massive oak tree gazing down at a stream falling past a tiny pool lit by bars of light falling through the branches high above.
Uncle Todd smiled, his aged face creasing with pleasure. “It’s one of my favorite places. And,” he added, “we’re almost to what I brought you here to see.”
They wound down around the pool and paused beside an overhanging ledge. “Here we are,” he said, motioning to a simple contraption close against the bank.
It was a tripod of sorts. Three long legs came together at the top and were bound firmly together. Hanging from this tripod was a series of earthenware bowls each larger and shallower than the one above it.
The first bowl, high in the tripod, was deep and small, only about four inches in diameter but at least five inches deep. Below it, hung another, almost twice as large but somewhat shallower, then another below that, again larger and shallower. There were five in all, each following the descending pattern.
“What’s with this bottom bowl?” Jamie asked. “It’s cracked and looks like it would leak.”
“Oh, it does,” Uncle Todd nodded. “It leaks badly.” He smiled the same gentle smile. “Want to try it?”
“Try it?”
“Sure, just uncork that little line there.”
Jamie turned and saw a small hose protruding from the bank just above the tripod. A cork was inserted into its end.
“Just step up the bank and uncork it.”
When Jamie uncorked it, a small stream of clear water flowed out, glittering in the dappled light.
“Now rock that tripod over a bit so the water falls into the top bowl.” Jamie rocked the tripod and watched as the water line slowly rose, climbing the glazed earthenware sides.
“It’s going to overflow,” he said.
Uncle Todd nodded. “Yup, that’s what we want.”
The clear stream continued to fall and after a while the little bowl welled up and the sparkling liquid began to run down its sides. It didn’t fall far. It spattered and danced in the bowl just below as it too began to fill.
Jamie, hot from the hike, watched half mesmerized as the second bowl filled, the level slowly rising from the overflow from the bowl above. Finally, it too welled over and the water cascaded down its side to fall into the bowl below as it too began to fill.
Bowl by bowl, each filled, crested, and overflowed into the bowl below, as Jamie stood, hand on the tripod, keeping it under the stream.
Finally, the fourth bowl crested and began to overflow into the bottom bowl. This bowl was shallower by far. Only an inch deep and bigger than a pie pan, its bottom was poked with tiny holes and imperfections. The water rose inside but it never climbed more than halfway up the short sides.
“Looks like it’s raining down there.” Jamie nodded to the droplets falling from the broad expanse of the bowl’s bottom.
Uncle Todd nodded. “They sure think so.”
Jamie looked and noticed for the first time the tiny flowers clustered under the bottom bowl. Their purple upturned faces were receiving the gentle “rain” from above. Glancing around, Jamie noticed there were no other flowers like them growing nearby.
Uncle Todd nodded and smiled. “They need a lot of water. But they don’t do well with pounding rain. This works well. Beautiful, aren’t they?”
“They are but couldn’t you have created a watering system a bit simpler than this?”
“Oh, yes. But the flowers are just a side benefit. The main reason for all this is for you and I.”
“For me?”
“Yes, and people like us.”
“Like us? But you . . .”
“I used to be like you. This is my reminder. I come here often.”
“So, would you care to explain?”
“Sure.” Uncle Todd settled himself onto a clump of moss and, looking up at Jamie, began.
“It’s representative of our lives. The top bowl is the person, the individual. It’s you. And that stream of water you are directing into the bowl is the love of God. Notice that even though it is drawn from the pool above and is essentially limitless, it has to be unstopped, and the first bowl needs to be under it. We’re the same way. God has limitless love for us but we have to open ourselves to it and position ourselves under it.
“It takes a long time to fill up with God’s love. Like that bowl, it becomes hard to tell that anything is really happening sometimes. But if we keep ourselves under the flow, it does. Slowly, silently filling. Then one day, we begin to overflow.”
“Into what?”
“What do you think? Where should your love, God’s love, go next?”
“My wife?”
Uncle Todd nodded. “Your marriage. That second bowl is your marriage.”
“And it doesn’t start to fill up until I’m full of God’s love?”
Uncle Todd just smiled.
“And then?”
“What do you think comes next?”
Jamie looked hard at the third bowl. “I guess if I’m the first bowl and my marriage is the second then . . . my children?”
“Yes. Your family. When your marriage is full of God’s love, where do you think it will overflow to?”
Jamie nodded. “To the children and the household for sure.”
“And so,” Jamie was thinking hard now, “that fourth bowl must be… the church community? Because if a family is overflowing with God’s love, they’ll naturally flow into something larger . . . like church community and extended family?”
Uncle Todd nodded smiling gently. “Yes, all of the above.”
“And then that overflows into . . .?”
“In an ideal illustration there would actually be multiple bowls flowing into the fourth one.”
“Right,” Jamie said, “for multiple families. But what is that last cracked and shallow one?”
“The broader community,” Uncle Todd said. “The broader unchurched community.”
“That’s why you can never fill it up?”
“That’s correct, but look, it’s so much cleaner than when we came.”
“Yeah and it’s watering the flowers. What does that mean?”
“Communities really are cleansed and purified and made useful by a godly presence. And there is one more lesson.” He nodded at the flowers. “The love of God heals, cleanses, and makes alive everything it touches. Even,” he nodded down at the little flowers, “even the ground. Our Anabaptist forefathers were known for being healers of the ground. For being restorers. For bringing life and health to broken places.”
He nodded again, looking thoughtfully up at the dappled light falling from high above. “Beware,” he said, “of a Christianity that does not begin to heal everything it touches.”
Then he looked at Jamie.
“Back to the bowls. Notice how each is shallower but larger than the one above?”
“Yes.”
“So with our lives. Every level is more public than the one before. Our marriage is more public than our personal lives. Our children and household are more public than our marriage. Our church relations are more public than our homes, and extended community is more public than our church family.
“There is this terrible temptation to skip levels. To direct our energy toward that which is visible and public and neglect the more important but less visible levels.
“It’s hard to prioritize the most private. We skip our personal devotions. Then, we have unkind words behind a closed bedroom door with our spouse but, not of course, in front of the children. Then we have impatient words with the children, but we dress up and look great when we go to church. We have church conflicts but we try to maintain a neat, unified image to seekers and those camera-toting tourists who come around.”
Jamie was leaning forward intently, forgetting to keep the tripod tilted under the steam.
“I see,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yes, I see. Like those men we see who are so involved in church work, or charitable auctions or the volunteer fire department but their own marriages or children are suffering.”
Uncle Todd nodded then stood pointing to the tripod. Jamie glanced over and realized he’d not been holding the first bowl under the flow for some time. He started to correct it but Uncle Todd shook his head. “Just watch.”
The first bowl had stopped overflowing and so had the second. The third was just ceasing and the fourth was still merrily overflowing into the fifth. Slowly each stopped overflowing, and the bottom bowl emptied itself. Finally, all stood still. The “rain” no longer sprinkled the tiny flowers and no bowl delivered to the one below.
“That,” Uncle Todd nodded, “is how it works.”
Jamie nodded and slowly let go of the tripod, staring at the bowls, each still and ungiving. He knew the sun and wind would come and eventually they would all be empty and dry. And the flowers, he thought, will eventually die, if not aligned with the love of God.
It was a thoughtful Jamie who followed Uncle Todd down the mountain. Half an hour later he climbed the gravel lane to his own house, seeing the light falling from the kitchen windows onto the darkening grass outside. He walked with purpose; the listless bearing gone. “At least,” he said to himself, “at least I know where to start.” And the rest, he thought, his hand on the knob, the rest will follow, all in good time.
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Darryl Derstine lives in Holmes County Ohio with his wife and 7 children. He works at Christian Aid Ministries Foundation and CAM Books. He can be reached at bss@camoh.org or 330-893-4915.
