All That Matters

The library, the PetSmart, and my car formed roughly an equilateral triangle. I walked to a gas station and asked if they had a gas can I could use to take gas to my car. The attendant sized me up, then grunted: “Yeah, I guess, but you’ll have to leave your driver’s license here. You know, as collateral.”

            The walk to the car in that intense June heat was as hard on me as the trek up the hill to the pet store had been. But I guess I was in line for yet another of heaven’s undeserved miracle gifts. Halfway to my destination some guy and his girlfriend stopped and offered me a ride. They said they had passed my car and when they saw me decided to turn around and help. After I gassed up, this Good Samaritan couple followed me back to the station and made sure everything was all right before going on their way, honking and giving me a good-luck wave as they went around the corner.

I still had zero clue about my future. But one divine reality was slowly coming into focus by now. Deep in my bones I knew that a miracle, maybe a series of miracles, had just happened. I didn’t know why and I didn’t know how, but there it was.

The next time I checked Facebook, there was a message from one of my long-ago schoolmates who had also attended Rio Lindo Academy, an Adventist boarding school in northern California. “Hey, Bruce,” her message read. “So sorry things are messed up. But did you know camp meeting’s going on right now? There in Prescott?”

            It had been long decades since this pretty high school girl had sat across the room from me in a junior chemistry class. And listened as the academy’s Bible teacher tried vainly to pour some Adventist-themed Bible ideas into my stubborn adolescent brain. But hearing from this old friend did remind me that, oh yeah, people in the SDA community did seem to love nothing in this world more than attending a summer camp meeting. Could it really be that for the Arizona Conference, it was going on right now? Here in Prescott? Sarah concluded her FB message with an optimistic note. “I bet there at the campgrounds there’s all sorts of odd jobs. Maintenance, maybe. See if they need any help for the week. Good luck!!”

            I logged off and sat there on my bunk, pondering the idea. I hadn’t entertained a solitary Adventist thought in such a long time. I knew zero about the church structure in this conference; until two seconds ago I hadn’t any notion that the city of Prescott was central to anything Adventist.

            Admittedly, there were two factors that drove me toward the campgrounds the next morning. Sure, as an eager new member of the gig economy, I was ready to pitch tents or give horsey rides to kindergarten kids at Sabbath School if I could earn a few dollars. I also remembered from Rio Lindo Academy that, while the food was decidedly vegetarian, some of the recipes were divinely delicious. I’d gladly sweep out the main sanctuary in exchange for a garden burger in the campground cafeteria.

            My Facebook nudge from Sarah came on a Tuesday. Wednesday morning, I was up early, ready to quote the Fourth Commandment about “Remember the Sabbath day” to whoever might be on the hiring committee over in God’s Country. The conference campgrounds were a sprawling place with huge outdoor pavilions for meetings, tents for kids, and a million RVs and tents sprawled everywhere. I soon figured out the weeklong event was already half over, but I was hoping (and even sort-of praying) to score gainful employment for at least the final four days.

            The campground parking lot and camping spaces were jammed, but oddly there seemed to be no one around. I could find no study rooms, no prayer groups, no meetings or sessions. Where was everybody? There were children’s activities off the center of the campground layout, but no one was eating a late breakfast in the dining commons and the Adventist Book Center store was quiet too. I found that looking for anyone, let alone the man I sought, was more or less fruitless. I wondered idly if the ABC might be passing out free healthy donuts, and then thought about inquiring at the cash register about work, but realized that no, I needed to find the right person at the main office.

            “Somebody who works in the conference ministry department,” I murmured to myself as I went out a side door of the bookstore and took stock of the sanctified terrain. Part of me did want to connect with whoever had the power to hire day workers. But even more, I was beginning to feel a stirring impulse to simply confide in one of God’s workers here how I felt heaven tugging on my heart all this week.

            I guess it’s true that, just like in Bible times when folks received even a gentle miracle like a lunch of loaves and fishes, it instinctively prompted them to rush out into the streets of Nazareth to share the exciting news. “Look what Jesus did!” I yearned to spill my guts about how my car just kept on gliding down the freeway apparently without fuel injecting into the carburetor. I wanted to witness about how my heart was touched by the PetSmart manager’s $20 gift. About that couple who took me from my car back to the gas station. Doesn’t anybody here want to listen to my story? 

            The drive from Denver to this secluded place of destiny had unsettled me and I felt that there must be a spiritual lesson in it, but I had no idea what the specifics of that lesson might be. Oh, sure, it was a tutorial in returning to God. Restoring my broken relationship. Turning my mind from the worldly burdens that had brought my world tumbling about me and focusing instead on heaven-bound matters. Certainly it was that. It had to be that.

            But why now, June of 2013, and not years and years ago? Why here, with no support system to sustain whatever message God wanted to deliver to His broken-down subject, Mr. Bruce Younggreen? And why at all? There are billions of people spilling all over the earth and most of them never experience anything out of the ordinary. A miracle? For me? What was that about? I wanted to sit down with a man of God and have him tell me what I needed to do next. How to respond to this. It wasn’t a coincidence that the miracle had brought me to an Adventist enclave. Trust me, no one can tell you what to do like an Adventist!

            But again, where were all the saints? It seemed like there were no ministers, no pastors, no leaders at this strange, leaderless camp meeting.

I finally spotted a man walking briskly toward the central pavilion in a dark suit, white shirt, and natty blue tie. This guy really did look like he came straight out of Central Casting for Men in Black. So either he was here with a flasher device to pick up an alien and wipe memories … or he was an Arizona Conference minister. I followed him into the pavilion. Catching up with him, I blurted out: “Excuse me, do you have just a moment? I really need to talk with someone.” He didn’t stop walking but he did a half-turn to look at me over his shoulder. “Not just now, sorry,” he said. “I don’t have time right now.” No explanation, no asking me who I was, no helpful suggestion on where I could find someone else.

            “Okay. Is there anyone else? Anywhere else I could go to speak with someone? It’s kind of important.”

            “I really . . . sorry, I just don’t know. All the leaders are headed to a prayer session right now.”

            I stopped walking. The pastor kept going without looking back. As I turned away and headed back to my car I said under my breath, but nevertheless aloud, “Interesting lesson, God. Thanks!”

            I wheeled my car out of there and thoughtfully made my way back into the city, the two images oddly juxtaposed in my soul. A lady at a pet store gives a total stranger $20. A Christian pastor keeps hurtling down the path toward a prayer session and doesn’t have time. And of course, there are a hundred variables and a myriad of factors and emotional strands that make one encounter a moment of kindness and the other one a classic story of the priest and Levite who crossed to the other side of the road. We have all been generous and we’ve all been calloused, and I’ve had my bad moments too. But it struck me as I eased back into Prescott that most of us could be so much kinder. We come up to the crossroads of HELP/DON’T, and if we simply paused and breathed a prayer, we’d realize that, hey, getting to that conference prayer caucus two minutes late would hardly lead to Armageddon. In my more prosperous days, I occasionally handed over a $20 bill, but so much more often kept it tucked in my wallet and studiously avoided the gaze of that bedraggled misfit with the cardboard sign. So there’s that . . .

Back in town I discovered that there is a place in Prescott that hires the homeless every morning for various jobs and pays the workers at the end of each day. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the laborers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.

It sounded perfectly wonderful (and biblical), but the two guys who handed me the leaflet warned that one had to be there early to be picked. Oops. So I was too late for Wednesday, but I dutifully filled out their organizer’s multi-page form so that if I showed up early enough the next day and got picked they would already have my “application”! Sure enough, I wound up working on Thursday and again on Friday. This put just over a hundred dollars in my pocket, which I figured would be enough to get me to the population centers of southern California where the pickings might be more profitable.

            So, I decided to leave Prescott first thing on Saturday. But the road leading out of town went right past the SDA campground and I figured that if I stopped and attended the Sabbath service, well, for sure the place would be humming on God’s holy day. At least I’d finally find some activity and maybe even get a chance to talk with someone, turn my life around, pray and be prayed with, and possibly find some answers. I parked and slipped into the pavilion in my dirty jeans and holey T-shirt. The offering collection was in progress as I looked around for a seat near the back. When the ushers finished passing the plates, the men on the platform left and the guest speaker walked to the lectern. I looked at my bulletin and saw that he was a bigwig from Loma Linda University Church. His name was Dr. Randy Roberts.

He was a thoughtful-looking man with close-cropped sandy hair and a trim goatee flecked with gray. The guy began with a prayer and then launched into a message, clutching a Bible but speaking without notes. Apparently, he was picking up some theological threads from the sermon he’d opened with the previous Sabbath. So, this week he was going to talk about the second parable Jesus gave on “that day,” whatever moment in the gospels had been the topic of Part One.

“If you remember,” he began, “Jesus had just given the parable of the lost sheep and now he immediately followed it up with the parable of the widow with ten coins who lost one of them. I want to talk this week about this second parable. Have you ever felt tiny? Really puny? Like you didn’t matter at all, to anyone?”

Wow! My head jerked up and I felt my pulse quicken. I knew in that very moment why my car had continued to run after it ran out of gas. This Roberts guy wasn’t delivering a prepared sermon to five thousand other people at a camp meeting in Arizona. No. This Pastor Randy was delivering a message given to him for just one person. Me.

“I remember a commercial several years ago,” he went on. “I can’t tell you what the commercial was trying to sell, but the camera was in a living room. Then it pulled back and up toward the ceiling, through the roof, into the clouds, out of the clouds as the neighborhood became a city which became the world which became a blue-and-white marble and then a solar system which became a dot of light that was joined by other dots that became the galaxy which shrank to a dot of light. Have you ever felt like the man in that living room? I know I have.

“That is all that the widow’s coin was. Just a mite, worth about a tenth of a penny. Just a man on a sofa on a planet in a solar system in a galaxy that was nothing more than a dot in a universe of darkness.”

How did he know? And how did GOD know that I’d be here on this Saturday morning, the very exact broken man who is so desperate to know that he counts for something in the Lord’s vast universe?

“We all want to matter,” this kindly man continued. “It feels good to have value, to feel like you are contributing, to be noticed, to be wanted and to be loved. Unfortunately, we don’t always seem to matter. My wife, Anita, and I were in the car one day and the traffic was worse than usual. Up ahead the police were directing traffic. As we approached, an officer told us we needed to take another route because all the local streets had been sealed off for a movie. Because our destination was inside the sealed-off area, we parked and walked closer to watch. For an hour, nothing happened. We slowly worked our way closer until we were at the taped-off boundary. The crowd was heavy, and we were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with the other gawkers. I found myself squeezed between my wife on one side and an attractive woman on the other side. Finally, the director called out: ‘Action!’ Immediately the woman beside me ducked under the tape and walked into the middle of the street. I hadn’t noticed her before, but I sure noticed her now. She was Michelle Pfeiffer! Imagine! I had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder between my wife and Michelle Pfeiffer for a full, glorious hour.” Amusement began to build, and then he quipped: “Don’t tell me there isn’t a God!”

Even this conservative Christian crowd burst out laughing and it took a moment before Dr. Roberts could go on! “Talk about not mattering! Do you suppose Michelle Pfeiffer is anywhere telling someone–in fact, even boasting of–the day she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Randy Roberts?”

There was another ripple of laughter, and I could tell this wise communicator had his congregation solidly with him as he got ready to unpack Jesus’ story.

“But losing that coin was not a laughing matter to the widow. The coin shouldn’t have mattered. It wasn’t worth anything and besides she had nine others. Still, she searched for the lost coin. She lit a lamp and swept under the bed and looked under everything, moved everything, and she didn’t stop until she found it. It was a coin that didn’t matter to anyone else. We drop pennies everywhere. No one picks them up. They’re not worth it. And this coin was worth only a tenth of a penny. But for some reason, that one lost coin mattered to her.”

Now the speaker paused, and I almost felt his glance fall upon me, the man sitting in the back with the smeared T-shirt. “You,” he went on, “might be that man on the couch. You might be a man who matters so little that no one, not even Michelle Pfeiffer, notices you standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her on a hot Burbank afternoon. You might be the widow’s coin.

            “You know, a coin is an interesting thing. If you look at one you will see it has an inscription on it. You know what that inscription says? It says, ‘You matter to God.’ But what is the point that Jesus was trying to make? I mean, He had just told the parable of the lost sheep. He had already made the point that when something matters to God, well, then, God does not rest until the lost item is found. So why did He go on to tell this extra story, this bonus illustration, about the widow’s lost coin?”

            You know you’re in a godly moment, a rendezvous setting heaven itself has arranged, when it begins to dawn on you that these very words you’re hearing are likely to change your life. My destiny was in this story on a Sabbath morning in Arizona! I was that lost coin and the inscription was for me! But I longed now to join this Pastor Randy in experiencing the rest of the story.

            “While Jesus was telling the parable of the lost sheep,” he explained, “several Pharisees were watching from the edges of the crowd. They were asking themselves how this Man could be the Son of God and yet so flagrantly mingle with the wretched and the sinners and the cursed. Jesus told the parable of the widow for the sake of the Pharisees. You see, the widow was in her house when she lost her coin and Jesus was rebuking them for failing to realize that the sinners in the pews matter.

            “But every coin has two sides and if you turn the coin over you will find another inscription. Do you know what it says? It says, ‘They matter to God.’ The Sadducees and the Pharisees, the elders and the ministers and the pastors. They matter to God, too.”

            Ouch. No way! But this speaker’s conclusion was inescapable. The harried, officious man in the black suit who was too busy to bother with me on Wednesday because I was going to make him late for prayers–he matters to God, too. Wow.

You talk about a maelstrom of emotions! In a way, I felt important because, hey, it seems I mattered to God. I didn’t matter to anyone else. I didn’t matter to myself. I had expected to die on this journey. But I mattered enough to God that He kept putting gas in my car until He got me to Prescott. I also felt very small and very ashamed–like I should be the one wearing the black suit and scurrying off to Nowhereville while ignoring those around me–for being so easily offended by that man. He had been small and petty; I had been equally small and petulant.

Even then, though, I would still matter to God. Wow! My head was spinning.

But my heart wasn’t. Not yet. After all, even if I mattered to God, I was still just a penny. My cynical side asked, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?”