Читать книгу At the End of the Day - James W. Moore - Страница 14

In the fall semester of 1997, two male sophomore students at Duke University were taking Organic Chemistry. They both had done very well on all the quizzes, the midterm exam, and the lab assignments, and both had a solid A going into the final exam. The two friends were so confident about taking the final that instead of studying, they partied the weekend before the final exam, which was scheduled for 8:00 A.M. on Monday. However, they partied so much that they overslept Monday morning and missed their exam.

They went to the professor to explain, and they made up quite a story. They told him that they were out of town for the weekend and planned to come back in plenty of time to study, but they had had a flat tire on the way back and did not have a spare tire. They were stranded on the highway and only just now got back to campus; could they take the final exam at another time? The professor thought this over for a moment and then agreed to let them take the final exam at 8:00 the next morning. The two guys were elated, and they studied organic chemistry all night long.

The next morning, the professor placed them in separate rooms and handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. On the first page was written: "Question One (value 5 points): Describe and give a specific illustration of free radical formation."

"Great," they thought, "we know this. This is going to be easy." Each completed that problem and turned to the next page. They were unprepared, however, for what they saw on the page. It said: "Question Two (value 95 points): WHICH TIRE?" (Homiletics [July 1998]: 24-25).

They had been caught—"done in." They were brought down by their high-sounding but false words. Like a boomerang, their lie came back to haunt them. There's a lesson there somewhere, and I think it is this: Christianity is not just a creed we profess; it is a lifestyle we live. It's not enough to say the words. We must live our faith in the day-to-day world. One of the things that is so beautiful in this story in Acts 3 is that we see Peter and John living their faith out in the world and sharing their faith with this man in need, giving to him the love of Jesus and the healing that only Christ can bring.

The great artist Rembrandt did a fascinating thing in one of his paintings. Instead of painting a halo over the head of Jesus in one work of art, he painted a halo around his hands. Not over his head, but around his hands! Why? Over the years, art critics have debated why Rembrandt did this. It seems to me that he was reminding us of all the ways Christ used his hands to do his ministry. With his holy and sacred hands, he healed the sick, fed the hungry, blessed the children, and raised the dead. With his hands, he showed us how to live faith and how to put our faith to work. With the sacred touch of his hands, he gives us a self we can live with and a faith we can live by.