Sermon, February 24, 2008 by Dr. David Robins
Reading: Numbers 22:12-31:Balaam and his ass.
February is the month for potholes in the road. They are everywhere. The potholes are big, big enough to swallow sub compact cars and household pets. This is the month when newspaper editors and television station managers send reporters out onto the roads to find, drive over, photograph and report on the biggest potholes in the area. If you Google potholes on the internet, you’ll get pictures from all over the country of potholes. If you drive around much, you know where the potholes are. You anticipate them. You drive around them, change lanes, slow down. Potholes form when cold weather freezes water on and in the roadway cracks, called alligator cracking. The alligator cracking expands until chunks of road break away.
25 years ago, I hit a pothole in an old car with lots of miles on it while going 55 miles per hour. The ball joint broke, the wheel locked in place, the car went into a screeching slide.
Since I am here this morning, you know that I didn’t crash and die. Was it a miracle that I didn’t crash?
Kate Braestrup points out rightly that “A miracle is generally understood to be an extraordinary event that cannot be explained by any plausible application of natural laws and principles. For example there is no natural law or principle that permits a human being to stroll across the surface of the sea or a donkey to speak.”
My car was strolling across the surface of the road, hit a pothole and went down. Had my car been able to speak earlier in the morning, it would have said to me, “Don’t drive me. Take me to the mechanic and fix my ball joint. But cars don’t speak. Perhaps the ball joint breaking was the miracle. Perhaps further up the road a truck was about to cross lanes, and I would have hit it head on had the ball joint not failed. We tend to think that the potholes in our lives are the bad luck. Maybe they are the miracles saving us from something worse up the road.
I saw a police report in the Ledger-Transcript last week about a policeman who found a pothole so large on Concord Street that he closed the road until the highway department could come and patch it. Perhaps that is what a miracle is all about. Someone seeing something wrong and doing something to fix it before anyone gets hurt. The police officer would say that he or she was only doing their duty. I think it is a miracle that women and men put on a uniform everyday and risk their lives for me, and they simply call it, ‘doing their duty.’
“Perhaps all anyone means by the word miracle is an outcome that defies the odds.” (Braestrup) A last minute score in a sports game gets called a miracle. A cancer that mysteriously goes into remission gets called a miracle. A child returns unscathed after being lost gets called a miracle. Perhaps the miracle is that human beings have hope and courage and sometimes the odds are with us.
The ass asks Balaam, what have I done that you smite me three times? Was the ass simply unlucky? No, the ass saw something that Balaam didn’t see. Balaam was blinded by the anticipation of things to come, and couldn’t see disaster ahead. His faithful donkey saw the disasters and stopped three times. Each time Balaam thought it was bad luck, an unfortunate setback in his haste. He blamed the donkey. The donkey hit the potholes because it saw worse disaster ahead if it continued.
February is a month when I notice that I make mistakes on a regular basis. I hit mental and physical potholes and twist my wheels, rattle my head, get stopped in my tracks. To paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay; “It is not true that life is one darn pothole after another. It is one darn pothole over and over.”
I see people in their workplaces hitting the darn potholes every day. They drop trays of goods, spill things, have gargantuan software malfunctions. Some families hit huge potholes, becoming homeless and turning to the shelter in Jaffrey, or Keene, or to the Monadnock Area Transitional Shelter
Potholes. It’s February.
February reminds me of a sign I saw on a Tennessee dirt road; “Choose your rut carefully. You will be in it for the next twenty miles.”
When Balaam got out of his rut in the road, and God opened his eyes to see how he had been heading for disaster in the wrong direction, Balaam fell down on his face in the road.
When I hit the pothole in my car and the ball joint broke, and I skidded onto the shoulder, and I finally got the car stopped without crashing, I didn’t fall on my face on the road with thanks that I had survived, but I did take several deep breaths of gratitude. A miracle is not defined by the event itself, it is defined by the gratitude. Anything could have happened with the car. It could have rolled over, crashed into a barrier, swerved into oncoming traffic. Those were the likely outcomes. Was it a miracle that the unlikeliest outcome happened? No. The miracle is the gratitude.
It is a miracle that we survive Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “one darn thing after another and over and over.” I should know. I’ve been driving three different cars when their ball joints failed. Is it a miracle that I’m still here? Am I inordinately lucky, or just dumb for driving cars that are old and not maintained well? Like Balaam, I have had my eyes opened, and seen the disaster coming. I have gratitude.
It’s February. There are potholes everywhere. On the roads, in the workplace, at home. Potholes mean slow down. Watch where you are going. Think ahead. Don’t rush. This life is precious.
I have a friend in Arizona who has survived three bouts with breast cancer. Is it a miracle that research has found the right combination of drugs and therapies to help her survive? Is it a supernatural miracle that she survives? The miracle to me is her gratitude for family and friends throughout each episode with cancer. She doesn’t fall to the ground with thanks, but she bows to the love and the life around her and within her. Her struggle is heartrending but her gratitude is infectious.
I am also mindful these days of a young woman in her twenties. I was her minister as she grew into adulthood. She has had three episodes with a cancerous brain tumor, and she is not expected to survive this recent attack of cancer cells. Still, she took the time to call me from Montana, and talk with me about her struggle and how grateful she is for the people in her life.
Did one woman receive a miracle and the other did not? No. Each one has the miracle. Each one bows in gratitude to what is most important in this life. We do not know the length of our days. All will encounter the final big pothole. Along the way, on the journey, you can be the miracle.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in Gifts From the Sea; “When you love…you do not love all the time, in exactly the same way from moment to moment. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity, in freedom….Intermittency—an impossible lesson for human beings to learn. How can one learn to live through the ebb-tides of one’s existence? How can one learn to take the trough of the wave?
How can one learn to take the potholes of life? How do we stay connected to the love and the gratitude that qualifies as a real miracle? How do we stay in touch with the deep mystery of this life, without fear?
Thich Nhat Hanh writes in The Miracle of Mindfulness; “half smile during your free moments. Anywhere you find yourself sitting or standing, half-smile. Look at a child, a leaf, a painting on the wall, anything which is relatively still, and smile. Inhale and exhale quietly three times. Maintain the half-smile and consider the spot of your attention as your own true nature.”
Even the potholes and the ice of February are part of my own true nature, and I smile at that. Let us move carefully, hopefully, lovingly, and miraculously through this pothole season.
- Have the ball joints on your car checked out.
- Get out of the ruts.
- Find time for gratitude and half-smiles.
- Be patient with the low points.
- Slow down and watch out for the potholes.
