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| The Difference a Day Can Make |
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December 7, June 6, November 22, September 11—just dates on the calendar, at first glance. Not, however, for anyone who lived through December 7, 1941; June 6, 1944; November 22, 1963 or September 11, 2001. These are days etched forever in our individual and collective cultural memories: the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack, the day the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the day planes plowed into the World Trade Center. These days changed the world. One day can make everything different—and sometimes it is immediately evident. There are other days, however—days whose anniversaries pass unnoticed—that also made a world-changing difference, though no one knew it at the time. There was the day that Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus instead of going to the back as she had always done, the day in 1914 when Gavrilo Princip shot the heir to the Austrian throne and set off the chain of events that led to World War I, the day that Lech Walesa formed the Solidarity Party in Poland or the day Nelson Mandela went to prison in South Africa. Most of the days that change the world and our lives are more like these: we don’t recognize them at the time for what they are. A phone call, a word of encouragement, an introduction at a party, an unplanned meeting in the grocery store—turn out, when we look back, to have changed our lives, although we didn’t know it at the time. Yes, a day can make a difference. This linear, contingent, uncertain and surprising reality of our lives can be a source of great anxiety, or of great hope. We get to choose—every day—which it will be. With the rapid pace of change in our culture and the never-ending capacity of the world to shock us with new manifestations of suffering and evil, there are plenty of reasons to be anxious. It can be tempting to fall into patterns of denial, despair or escapism. There are many who are choosing this route. Or, we can take seriously what we believe as Christians—that we serve a God who is at work every day in our lives and in our world to bring about His creative and redemptive purposes. (Sometimes we recognize His work. Most often we do not.) We can remind ourselves that we serve a God who invites us—each day, in small ways and sometimes large ones—to join with Him in this creative and redemptive work of loving the world back to Himself. At Houghton we are trying to cultivate an enlarged capacity for seeing the world with God’s eyes—looking at it with ruthless honesty, but also with the imagination that love and grace make possible. We are practicing what it means to see in each day the surprising potential of divine improvisation, and the opportunities that God puts in our way to make our lives count that day. In Psalm 90, the psalmist reflects on the meaning of a day in the light of eternity. A day certainly is not everything, but it is something. In the context of particular days we are invited to imitate the heart of our Father in Heaven, invited to make a difference in the world for good. The psalmist put it this way: “Teach us to number our days—that we may gain a wise heart.”
Shirley Mullen ’76 is president of Houghton College. |
by
Shirley A. Mullen