Have you advanced others with acts of faith?
I know the exact moment where it happened: When I released my hand from the back of the seat of my young daughter’s wobbly 2-wheeled bike.
Having let go, I slowed my pace so that she pulled away from me on the paved path. I hooted my delight in her sudden, newfound independence.
She didn’t say much at first, I think because she was concentrating so hard on keeping her equilibrium. I couldn’t see her face, but if it was like mine, she was grinning from ear to ear.
In the days preceding this heart-filling moment, I had been jogging along with her up and down the sidewalk, my hand on the back seat, trying to help her find her balance by gradually shifting more of the control from my hand to her whole body and mind.
As you can imagine, the gamut of feelings emerged in both of us during those transitional experiences: frustration, hopefulness, wanting to quit, wanting to try again, tongue squeezed with determination in figuring out the balancing act.
And then on the pathway … it happened … she moved ahead!
Recently, I heard a preacher ask the congregation: “What have you, what have we, helped to advance?” The context was not riding bikes, but a biblical story about the baby Jesus being presented in the holy temple by his Jewish parents according to their religious laws and customs.
They were met there by two aged ones, full of faith, patience and wisdom, speaking words of blessing and affirmation. In so doing, the old man and old woman advanced their tradition of faith. They waited for the right time to greet the young family and boost them forward with their acts and words of faith and fulfillment.
The preacher compared this rich, ancient story with the hackneyed—even jaded—yearend cartooned hand-off of the hourglass from an exhausted oldster representing the outgoing year to a bouncing baby representing the incoming year. The bittersweet caption is usual- ly something like: “I’ve done all I can; it’s all yours!” or “I’m out of here; best of luck, kid.” Sigh—not much of a boost. My daughter’s developments that afternoon were staggering, so to speak.
Balancing a teetering bicycle all by herself. Finding another ability to navigate her own way (after crawling, walking, running, swimming, dancing). The ability to start and stop her own project. Accepting the risks of starting and stopping. Learning to watch where she is going and to watch for others on or in her way. Deciding where she wants to go and deciding if she has what she needs to get there.
None of it done perfectly or completely. Many false starts and unplanned stops (falling off and bruising knee and ego).
And it all happened in a moment of my releasing, and thus her advancing.
And so, wherever we are in this given year, I invite you and each of us to live into that archetypal question put to me: “What have you, what have we, helped to advance?”