DANE FOWLKES

Our last night near the end of orientation and security training prompted one of my newest friends to suggest that three of us enjoy dinner together for old time’s sake. The Italian cafe we chose was closed for a private party, so we drove downtown to a popular local hamburger joint, only to find it closed on Monday nights. The Mellow Mushroom seemed our next best and nearest option, but we couldn’t locate a place to park. Out of more familiar options, we settled for Casa Something-Or-Other, a safe bet assuming they would at least have tolerable chips and salsa, even if the food was a bust. I glanced left and right and spotted more than a few college students from nearby Appalachian State University, a good sign on two counts–flavor and cost.
We sat there like a scene from our own version of the Three Amigos; the members of this trio are as dissimilar as could be. One of us stands out because he is a college hall of fame football player who stands six feet five inches tall and retains a muscular frame. The second member is a salt and pepper crew cut pilot with matching mustache and reading glasses dangling in front of his chest. I am the shortest guy whose hair is much-too-rapidly thinning on top, making hats more a necessity these days than a fashion accessory. In the process of casually chatting about our new employment and familial contexts, I learned that I had the oldest child, the most grandchildren, and held the dubious distinction of being oldest of the group. It was, in a word, sobering. The bad news is that in group settings these days, increasingly, I find myself the eldest participant. The good news is that I feel much younger than I look. The best news is that advanced age offers a suitable vantage point for honest evaluation. 

A multitude of tortilla chips and two chimichangas later, my seasoned pilot friend posed a considerable question: What are the most important lessons we’ve learned in life? While listening to my companions share their thoughts, I considered some conclusions of my own. Sometimes I wish I could go back and start all over again; at other times I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Either way, I’m old enough that such thoughts matter. When my time came to respond, I drew four conclusions, and leave them as a catalyst for your own meditation:

1. Surrender to God is the surest path to a life that counts for something. 

2. The love of a godly woman is to be valued and nurtured far above any other earthly affection. 

3. An authentically loving family provides both a sacred refuge from the damaging winds that life blows our way, and a secure launch pad from which to dare to implement dreams.

4. Grace is always present tense.

I walked through the grand cross-shaped opening into another dimension. Visiting the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, is no ordinary experience simply because Billy Graham was no ordinary man. Scratch that. Dr. Graham was a common country boy raised on a dairy farm who aligned himself with God in such a way that the world will never be the same as a result. The library tour is aptly termed “journey of faith,” as one’s own relationship with God and the world is prodded by gaining glimpse after glimpse of the profound breadth of Graham’s evangelistic reach, forged on the anvil of surrender and crucible of the Great Commision.
Never underestimate the value or potential of a solitary life. History is largely a collection of individual narratives magnified by critical moments. But what makes a life stand the test of time, rising above mediocrity and the temporal? David Brooks, author of “The Road to Character”, wrote in the New York Times on April 11, 2011:

“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones. But our culture and our educational systems spend more time teaching the skills and strategies you need for career success than the qualities you need to radiate that sort of inner light. Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.”

We are, each of us, common clay, but therein lies our creative potential; our responsibility and opportunity is to lead value-based lives. Oswald Chambers speaks to this when he writes: “True surrender will always go beyond natural devotion. If we will only give up, God will surrender Himself to embrace all those around us and will meet their needs, which were created by our surrender. Beware of stopping anywhere short of total surrender to God. Most of us have only a vision of what this really means, but have never truly experienced it.” Each of us is called to come to the end of ourselves by surrendering all we are to Christ, whose modus operandi is transforming ordinary into the extraordinary. 

 

I would describe it as momentarily feeling out of sorts and out of place. Seated in an airport terminal, dressed in sport coat and tie, surrounded by other men in sport coats and ties, I admit that at first glance I did not appear to be out of place. I wore the same name brand clothes as the other businessmen scattered about the black vinyl chairs, although it was highly likely that we had assembled our wardrobe from very different sources. Johnston and Murphy saddle oxfords, Dockers cuffed and pleated khakis, Joseph A. Bank dress shirt, Tommy Hilfiger tie, and Haggar sport coat–the difference was that I had purchased every item at thrift stores. Our clothes were similar, but their cost dissimilar by a long-shot. The real difference between us became apparent when I retrieved my cell phone from my pocket. The gentleman seated across from me held a Samsung Galaxy with a screen as large as the flat front television on our bedroom wall. To my right another man viewed a movie on an iPhone 6. Androids and iPhones, with their users gliding fingers across touch-screens, taking care of business or simply entertaining themselves. Me? I pulled out of my pocket a flip phone to place a call to my wife. All eyes turned to glare as though I had violated some unwritten code of corporate ethics. They appeared stunned and discombobulated. I had introduced incongruence to their morning. Contemporary business dress. Flip phone from another era. What gives? What they did not know is that my antique cellular device was a temp phone I had purchased for use during transition in employment. the week before I was just like them placing high demands on my iPhone to organize and better my life. I would not use the flip phone for long, but for that instant I stood out from the crowd in an uncomfortable manner.

Am I willing and prepared to standout in ways that matter? Culture loathes nonconformity. Political correctness is the order of the day. While Christ-followers always exude light from within culture, our influence comes by remaining discernible from it. We behave differently, process information differently, view the world differently, and, more than anything else, love differently. Light ceases to be when indistinguishable from dark. Salt relinquishes its influence when it no longer alters flavor.

Today is different from any other day in your life, and any other day in human history for that matter. You are not the same person that you were yesterday, last week, five months ago, or ten years ago. Tomorrow you will greet the morning a different person than you are right now. For some of us this is good news, for others, not so much. Either way, change is a constant in life, either desired or unwelcome, but always unsettling. It moves us from where we were to where we will be, containing the seed for either regression or growth. Change removes the predictable, threatens confidence, instills fresh vision, renews flagging energy, or perhaps drains our last drop of resilience.

I need look no farther than my own recent experience for an example of undesired change. A former student of mine posts his thoughts from time to time on Facebook, and I must confess that I’m clueless as to what he’s writing about. He addresses complex ethical theories using philosophical jargon with which I’m unfamiliar, and I feel compelled to fast track learning just so I can claim one wit of understanding. I quickly face the stark reality that I know less than a student I once taught, and that it’s far too late to catch up. Standing still is its own kind of change because the context of standing shifts like the ebb and flow of an ocean tide.

Fortunately, today I’m living out positive change. I am sitting in the E-Terminal of Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, adjacent to Gate E38, waiting for my flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, en route to Boone and the headquarters of Samaritan’s Purse. As of this morning, I am employed by Samaritan’s Purse, initiating what I anticipate will be the fulfillment of what I understand to have been God’s call on my life from the time I was nineteen years of age. As desired as this opportunity is, it will require continued improvement, growth, and adjustment. I cannot remain the same, and would not choose such because change softens me, vulnerability feeds brokenness, and brokenness is the precursor to spiritual awakening.
“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John‬ ‭3‬:‭2‬ KJV)

If I were to write a novel about a missionary, it would probably begin something like….

Africa ruined a man and healed a man, the same man, at the same time. He had not known it then, but realized it now– more discovery than knowing, and more sudden insight than understanding. He had come expecting to effect change in others; instead, he was terminally infected by something altering him forever, nearly convincing himself that his motives had been pure in leaving a grieving mother and moving across the globe to an alien place with unfamiliar customs, cacophony of language and confusing demands on the Wazungu. A more honest probe would lay bare a wanderlust magnified by grandiose imagination and highly inflated self-estimation. He was, after all, a missionary. Fortunately,God uses fools, frequently softening them in the using.

Chicken Little may have been a conspiracy theorist, but for the first time in my life I can relate to his overhead pessimism. The sky has been falling at our house for more than a week. Waking up is hard enough under ordinary circumstances, but add the din of roofers tromping overhead before the break of dawn and it’s downright excruciating. Scraping, pounding, stomping–everything amplified by a hollow attic and pre-coffee auditory sensory perception; the trollop is somewhat akin to Patton’s armored divisions tracking across North Africa. Mornings these days are like a lake’s glassy surface shattered by falling rock. Our only consolation is that an end is in sight. After a week and a half, the two shirtless roofers are applying the final bundles of shingles, and my anticipation of reclaiming peace has attracted spiritual overtones.

I find it difficult to focus on the simplest routines with overhead distraction–morning cup of Community Coffee, casual conversation with my wife, Scripture reading in Swahili, wisdom from Chambers, and, most of all, prayer. To make matters worse, it doesn’t take a lot to derail my train of thought. I learned at an early age that bowing my head to pray is a dangerous act–I rarely stay awake long enough to get beyond “Our Father.” Reading requires enormous concentration lest I scan the same sentences repeatedly without an ounce of retention. Suffice to say that my mental and spiritual productivity wanes when the sky is falling.

Life may seem prone to chaos, but all too often the distractions are of my own making. I’m to blame for much of what drags me away from God’s best, and my most dangerous distractions are born of contradiction. I read about courage while paralyzed by fear, so I refuse to move. I claim to love while nursing resentment, and it turns into hate. I fantasize about missions while fostering prejudice, losing sight of the goal along the way. I preach on grace while doling out judgment, disqualifying myself from caring in the process. Spiritual integrity is required to weather the fallout of falling skies.

“Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.…” (Philippians 3:12-14)

I am grateful to Major Kirby Dendy, recently retired chief of the Texas Rangers, for agreeing to write a foreword to my upcoming book, Ordinary Glory: Finding grace in the commonplace. The following is an excerpt from his comments: 
In Ordinary Glory, Dr. Fowlkes shares observations and experiences in his life that demonstrate God’s grace in a number of everyday situations and conditions we have all likely experienced. Like seeing beauty in unlikely things such as a leaf or spider web, he provides examples of how grace may be found in areas where we may not have previously recognized its presence, such as in relationships and interactions with family, friends and even strangers. The real trick, at least for me, is being capable of discerning it for what it is. Jesus repeats throughout scripture that those with eyes should see and those with ears should hear. More than once while reading Ordinary Glory, I felt the need to be fitted with glasses because Dane did such a masterful job of pointing out situations I, too, had experienced yet had not recognized, much less appreciated the presence of God’s grace. Repeatedly, his observations made me think, “Yeah, I know exactly what he’s talking about….never thought of it that way, but he’s right; God’s handprint is all over that.”  
Dr. Fowlkes provides a perspective and clear writing style I find refreshing and enjoyable. In Ordinary Glory he doesn’t delve into deep theological theory, debate, history or the extraneous issues related thereto. He takes common situations most all of us have experienced and gives us simple, easily understandable explanations of how God is present in our lives showering us with love even though we have done absolutely nothing to deserve it. From my point of view, the beauty and value of Ordinary Glory is that it provides a sense of enlightenment that sharpens my vision, but more importantly it refines my discernment capabilities to better recognize God’s grace in my own life in situations and ways I previously would not have believed possible. Dane’s superior communication skills provide a level of clarity that was not previously present in my ability to see God’s grace; it is now almost as clearly visible as the beauty of His creation. This is certainly no ordinary or commonplace achievement. Dane has done an exceptional job and it is my wish that you find it as enjoyable, enlightening and valuable as I have.

The kingdom of God may best be described by the theological term ‘topsy-turvy,’ a phrase that comes in handy when ordinary words fail to capture the essence of a moment or the import of a movement. First recorded in England in 1528 as a compound word formed from ‘top’ and the obsolete ‘terve’, meaning ‘topple over,’ topsy-turvy portrays the sense of confusion one feels when things are not in proper order or are metaphorically upside-down. That’s more or less what Jesus meant when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He was reminding us that the kingdoms of this world are not identical with the kingdom of God, a fact that is frequently lost on Church leadership. Rather than standing in relief or opposition to these kingdoms, Christianity has often imitated them, and is still hard at it. A modern trend is afoot to redefine the pastor as CEO, the church as a business corporation, parishioners as customers, and to judge the whole ecclesiastical kit and caboodle according to a numerical bottom line. This obsession to imitate Madison Avenue explains the popularity of prosperity theology and edges the Church precipitously toward the abyss of conformity. Under this scenario the Gospel is more akin to a good stock tip, or picking the right horse at Louisiana Downs, or lucking out with the right number in the Lottery, than to changing the world. “The righteous get rich and the poor get what they deserve.”
The consistency with which the kingdom of God is not the opposite of the kingdoms of the world should serve as a warning to us. Donald Kraybill suggests that “the kingdom of God points to an inverted, or upside-down way of life that contrasts with the prevailing social order.” Jesus of Nazareth was well versed in topsy-turvy theology. Speaking to some rudely religious people, he warned: “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” He shocked his disciples by saying, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). Before we shout ‘Amen’ too loudly and continue on about our business, it would behoove us to repent from acting like Christianity is a status rather than a calling, for downplaying the responsibilities of a relationship with God and only emphasizing its benefits. No wonder so many are rejecting the Church. If the Church is not committed to changing the world, it has become irrelevant. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven” must move from being a prayer to becoming our vow.

(Taken from my soon-to-be-published book: Ordinary Glory: Finding grace in the commonplace)

He died without fanfare. Closing his eyes for the last time, he went peacefully in his sleep at Wexham Hospital. The prime minister of Great Britain described him as a “great man”, but I confess I’d never heard of him.
He was born Nicholas Wertheimer in 1909 to Jewish parents. By 1938 he was a young stockbroker in London with a promising career ahead of him; that is, until he learned the plight of Jewish children under Hitler. Canceling a Swiss skiing vacation because of the plea from a friend, Nicholas traveled to Prague to visit this friend who was aiding refugees that were fleeing from Nazi Germany. He witnessed Jewish children and their families living in awful conditions. Unable to avoid a sense of urgency and responsibility, Nicholas arranged for trains to carry Jewish children out of occupied Prague to Britain, battling bureaucracy at both ends, saving them from almost certain death, and then kept quiet about his exploits for a half-century. He organized a total of eight trains from Prague, while organizing foster families for the Jewish children in Britain, placing advertisements in newspapers and working tirelessly to find British families willing to care for the boys and girls in their homes. A total of 669 children travelled to safety on eight trains across four countries. He died on the anniversary of the departure of a train in 1939 carrying the largest number of children – 241; however, his actions would have escaped public notice had it not been for his wife. Cleaning their attic one day in 1988, his wife found a dusty scrapbook that had the record of names, pictures, and documents detailing the children’s unique stories. After explaining the book and recalling the memories, his wife was dumbfounded. Sir Nicholas Winton was knighted by the Queen in March 2003.

Within each of us is the seed of greatness juxtaposed near a whole host of character traits labeled ‘complacency.’ If I’m not careful, I speak just loudly enough to hear myself; self-absorption prevents me from recognizing the desperate pleas of the hurting all around me. Conviction shapes opinions, but only love puts belief into action.

But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” And Jesus answering said, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, ‘Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.’ Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?”And he said, “He that shewed mercy on him.” Then said Jesus unto him, “Go, and do thou likewise.” (‭Luke‬ ‭10‬:‭29-37‬ KJV)

Grace and inspiration is all around us if we take the time to look. I was privileged recently to pray over an eighty six-year-old saint who was preparing to travel to Ecuador on a mission trip. When asked about taking such a risk at her age she responded by saying God had not granted her good health so she could simply wait around to die. 
It is human nature to anticipate. The moment we stop looking forward is the moment we stop living. The challenge is to see something meaningful to hope for midst the ordinary stuff of life. To embrace this moment and look forward to the next with fascination breathes life and hope.
The aging know this instinctively. The young aren’t aware, but it is just as true for them. 
“I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.” (Ellen Goodman)