particularly given his already demanding schedule. He found it difficult and frustrating; he couldn’t simply sit down and make the beautiful music he wanted. There were scales to learn, and basic rhythms to be mastered. Initially, he decided against going to a teacher, trying such shortcuts as a “Miracle Piano Teaching System” on the computer. A friend’s warning proved to be prophetic: “You might be learning music with that computer, but you’re not learning how to play.”3
Eventually, Adams signed up for an intensive ten-day music camp. He discovered that there is no substitute for regular, disciplined practice and the tutelage of teachers. By the end of the first year, his frustrations began to recede. He actually desired time for practice. He had become initiated into the art of piano playing. He also learned to appreciate the craft of making and caring for pianos, as well as the importance of the history of pianos and great pianists—classical, jazz, blues, even rock-and-roll.
Some things take time. They can’t be coerced and they can’t be done quickly or easily. Besides playing the piano I think of gardening or learning to hit an inside curve-ball or reading poetry or learning to paint or dance. Raising children and being married is done over the long haul, too. I remember a comment by Wendell Berry who said that it takes more courage to be married day after day for fifty years than it does to be Samson. Samson goes out and does one spectacularly faithful act while long marriages consist of thousands of small acts of fidelity over many years.
Knowing God takes time, too. God walked with his people for forty years across the wilderness, sat with his people for seventy years in exile, became a human being and pitched his tent with us for over thirty years before dying on a cross and then taking three days to be resurrected. To know this God means learning to walk alongside at the pace of God. When God called to Moses through the burning bush it was after Moses had been walking those desert hillsides for forty years. I’m convinced that those forty years were a kind of twelve-step recovery for Moses that freed him from his addiction to empire; it was not simply that it took forty years for Moses to be ready to lead the people out of imperial bondage, but it took forty years for Moses to be able to see the burning bush in the first place. For all I know, God had been burning bushes out there in the wilderness for a long time and Moses never had the eyes to see them or had failed to slow down enough to notice them.
The same goes for walking with Jesus. There is no substitute for the slow, sometimes painful growth that comes through disciplined habits of practice shaped by the crucified and risen Christ. One does not become an excellent piano player, painter, dancer, carpenter, or baseball player overnight; neither does one learn to become a Christian overnight. We can’t know Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, in five quick easy lessons accompanied by an inspirational DVD. One needs teachers and mentors and a community of friends, and one needs to practice over a long period of time.
The first words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel according to John are, “What are you looking for?” (1:38). He is talking to two disciples of John the Baptist. And they respond in what sounds like a strange way, “Teacher, where are you staying?” What they are looking for, what they seek, is not so much information from the teacher; otherwise Jesus could have handed them his book or directed them to his website. No, they want to know him.
The word we translate as “staying” refers to the source of one’s life and meaning. So when these two disciples ask Jesus, “Where are you staying?” they are asking, “What is it that sustains you? What power do you have? Where do you remain? Where do you live? How do you live? Who are you really?” It’s the same word used in John later, over in chapter 15, when we are told we are to abide in Christ. Abiding, staying, remaining, residing, dwelling—they all take time.
Jesus says encouragingly, “Come and see.” Then John tells us, “They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.” Here, in a simple and understated way, John gives us the essence of Christian discipleship. Discipleship is not primarily getting information or receiving the “right” answer; it is moving into the “house” with Jesus. It is living with Jesus Christ. And to live with Jesus takes time and community.
Emily Dickinson wrote, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— /… The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.”4 There are some things, and truth is one of them, that can be understood rightly only if we understand them over time. The very essence of truth is that it can only be known slowly, in bits and pieces that are chewed on, meditated on, reflected over, talked about, practiced and then practiced some more with others living with the same truth.
Gradually, as we come to know the truth of Jesus Christ, we may be dazzled.
3. Adams, Piano Lessons, 86.
4. Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 506.
Out of the Old Rock
Kyle Childress
On the floor of the little church building where I served my first pastorate were three spots on the floor along the second pew where the varnish and polish were worn down to the bare wood. It was where Dude Templeton, Olga Blair, and Irene Calhoun rested their feet during the church service. These three women, three dear friends, sat on the same pew together every Sunday for forty years. Dude Templeton, who was in her mid-eighties about this time, had been sitting in the same place for forty-two years in a row without ever missing a Sunday.
I was a young and new pastor, but I knew what I was looking at as I gazed at the worn slick places on that floor. Fidelity.
Woody Allen had a point when he said that 90 percent of life consists in just showing up. I’m convinced that a large percentage of faith as a Christian consists in showing up. Dude Templeton, Ms. Blair, and Ms. Irene had been showing up every Sunday, usually twice, not to mention weddings and funerals and Wednesday night prayer meetings, for a long time.
Over its 125 years that church, like many in that part of Texas, had Baylor student pastors who served those churches for two or three years before going off to seminary or to a larger congregation somewhere. In that short time, these churches knew their calling was to train and teach these youngsters and prepare them for mature ministry. With profound patience, Dude, Ms. Blair, and Ms. Irene endured the enthusiasms of post-adolescent pastors, sat through the rock bands and revivals, gimmicks and creativity sometimes bordering on and other times crossing the line of the ridiculous. During the week this trio of elderly women quilted together and went down to the federally funded senior citizens center where they ate lunch in fellowship with other elders of the community. What all these seniors—white and black—enjoyed doing the most after the meal was sitting around the piano and singing hymns, reading and reciting Scripture to one another, and discovering friends for the first time in their octogenarian lives of another race who, surprise of surprises, were just as Christian, if not more so, than they were. At church suppers these three women were legends. Dude taught the younger women that in cooking for church suppers it was imperative to practice two things: cook your very best because it is for the Lord, and cook a lot because it is for the church. My testimony is that she knew how to do both.
Dude had been in church all of her eighty-five years and was raised just down the road. She had married a good, quiet man who farmed nearby. Between the two of them they had and raised ten kids during the Depression, World War II, droughts and hardship, and through it all, they never wavered. They never missed church—except for a couple of times when she was giving birth on a Sunday.
The first time she missed church after forty-two straight years was while I was her pastor and she had to go into the hospital to have her gall bladder removed. While the young doctor visited with her as she entered the hospital, he asked her, “When was the last time you’ve been in the hospital? She said, “I’ve never been in one.” He asked a little indignantly, “Well, didn’t you have any children?” She reared up in the bed, “I’ll have you know that I’ve had ten kids but I