THIRTY-THREE

Heroic Selflessness

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is o ered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the o er of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

– C.S. Lewis –

He went out of his way to serve. He didn’t have to. No one expected it. No one would’ve noticed had he just walked away. But he didn’t. He stopped. He noticed. He cared. He acted. It sounds like any of the moments recorded in the Gospels. It reads like the memoir of a saint. But it’s not. It’s simply a moment from my life. Faced with an impossible decision – one with no right answer, a stranger saw in my face my confusion. And he sat down.

I knew him only by reputation, though I’d seen him in the halls. He was a pastor, a professor, a leader, a legend. All the same, he still sat. And he asked me what was on my mind. It was one of those “any port in the storm” sort of times, so I told him. I told him about my predicament. I told him about my fear. And he just listened. He’d ask a question occasionally (maybe just to let me know that he was still engaged); but, for the most part, he just listened. And when I was through, he o ered three sentences of sage counsel that changed my life forever. Then he stood up, shook my hand, wished me well, and disappeared.

In a world dominated by our schedules and our own self-concern, it was heroic. And I don’t use that word lightly, for not all heroes have capes. And they don’t all wear uniforms. Sometimes, the heroes we need come dressed simply in the attire of the ordinary: ordinary folks doing extraordinary things for others. And that’s the key: for others. That’s what makes a hero – extraordinary selflessness.

So, it is heroic: anytime we will set aside our agendas and plans for another, anytime we’ll give and serve and sacrifice – following the example of our Lord. But that requires deep, internal change. It demands that we abandon our “too-weak, halfhearted desires” that center on our own lives – our time, our money, our priorities, our families, our health, our safety, our convenience, our “mud pies” – to discover the fulfillment we only find in helping and serving and loving one another.

It’s faithful selflessness. Faith-filled selflessness. Heroic selflessness. It is the very call of Christ that thrusts us beyond ourselves, to love something other than our own wants, to pursue something other than our own needs; to love in a higher and truer and purer way: realizing that we need one another, realizing that we are a part of one another inasmuch as Christ is a part of us. It’s a life spent one day at a time, a life spent one moment at a time, trying to outdo one another in gentleness and goodness and compassion; it’s a life of loving in a way that’s blameless and fearless – loving how our Lord loves: with understanding and patience and gratitude and forgiveness. It’s a life wholly (and holy) displeased with our ordinary, “me-first” attitudes that finds itself by losing itself in the way of Jesus Christ.

Day Thirty-Four | April 1