Doing the Word Freestyle...

“But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only...” James 1:22
On the surface my daddy’s life looked pretty ordinary. A child during the Depression, he grew up in a poor farm family with an abusive father. Hard work began for him when he was a small child, responsible for tending the family’s cows. Their food depended upon his work. His escape from the pain of his world was education and reading. He was a college graduate who discovered he was not suited for the work he had prepared for as a county agent. At a crucial point in his life, he decided to buy a farm instead of returning to graduate school. His work life was spent in a paper mill with a band of brothers who worked and retired from the same mill. He was a faithful husband and father to one wife and two daughters. His fundamental faith was both a comfort and a thorn in his side. We could, and often did, debate/argue what we each believed about God and the Bible. Daddy did love to argue. He never volunteered in any programs for the poor or sick. He never signed a petition. When it was his turn to serve as a soldier in World War Two, he went without protest and never second guessed his decision. There was nothing in his life that looked like he was a doer of the Word beyond his church attendance and giving money to various institutions. This man turned down the request to be a deacon because he felt he could not meet the requirements to be a good deacon.
At his funeral, mama and I began to discover how daddy had been a doer of the Word. One man came to us, crying as he told the story of daddy lending him the money to give his daughter a special wedding. Another man told how daddy had loaned him the down payment for a new home. A Mennonite couple told of his financial support for their church’s missions. Nieces who had been sent to college with his financial support, brothers and sisters who had always called on Tom when times got hard, friends who knew he was a friend in want and plenty alike, all rose up and blessed his name.
Much of what he had done was unknown to mama, gifts given with no strings attached. He could do this because he and mama separated the bills with each of them paying their part from their own accounts. Mama’s work check and his were separate and each had freedom to do as they would with what was leftover after the bills were paid. An ordinary life with an ordinary paycheck lived in an extraordinary fashion... freestyle doing of the Word with no need for recognition of the doing. He believed so he did in the one way he could. He gave money.
I think about daddy now and then in this age of activism. Everywhere I look I see people celebrated for doing good. And, I am glad for that. It helps to know that so many care so much and are passionately involved in doing what they believe. Churches and church people, clubs and schools, corporations and cities, all jumping on the public bandwagon of doing good. The positive energy that comes from this is life saving. And yet... I remember daddy and wonder about all the quiet doers of the Word, those who give and do everyday without recognition or praise. The African American man I met who is sponsoring a gathering place for kids who want to play jazz, buying furniture at Habitat (where we met), providing as a father would for kids who need one... our neighbor who is truly a neighbor in deed and relationship... my friend Ethel who felt called to teach fourth grade Sunday School for thirty years because she loved children that age... so many people doing ordinary good in extraordinary ways... surely God must be pleased.
I need to be more aware of doing ordinary good, living and doing the Word in all things great and small. I think my ordinary life lived in ordinary times can be transformed by simply doing good when I can. I do not have to match anyone else’s style of doing the Word, just be steadfast and present to possibilities that abound all around me. Today I will do one act of goodness and give thanks for the opportunity to do what I believe.