There are many who say, “Who will show us any good?” Lord, lift up the light of Your countenance upon us.
Psalm 4:6
The main street of the dusty Old West town is ominously empty. Two men ride slowly between the silent buildings, sensing a palpable danger. Sure enough, gunfire erupts.
The two are quickly pinned down by an unseen sniper, who is just drawing a clear, final bead on one of them when another shot rings out … and the would-be assassin falls dead. Behind him, a solemn figure steps out of the shadows. It’s the desk clerk from the town’s small hotel, a wisp of smoke rising from the bore of his rifle.
Saw that scene, the other day, and two things set the moment, rich in cliché, apart. One, the hero is a desk clerk. And two, the quirky exchange that ensues.
At first, the young man rescued doesn’t recognize the fellow who’s saved him. The clerk introduces himself, and the young man smiles, remembering.
“Does one cup of water earn me all this help and good intention?”
“I was sure thirsty,” the clerk says, smiling back.
Later, the young man explains things to his companion. He and the clerk had both done time in prison, a few years earlier. One day, some bored guards had entertained themselves by heavily salting the prisoners’ food and giving them nothing to drink. Then, two prisoners at a time were locked in a cell and directed to fight. The last man standing got a cup of cold water.
“We fought for almost an hour,” the young man says. A pause. “I gave him the water.”
At no point does the young man suggest that he and the clerk were friends, before or after the fight. Which brings a question to his companion’s eyes: why did he give the man his water?
The young man shrugs that off. “I always was a perverse, contentious man,” he says.
A great many of us are. Yet, every day, we’re presented with opportunities for sacrifice, most of them seemingly small. To let someone go through a door ahead of us. To make room for a car that wants to cut in. To round up the tip for the waitress. To leave someone else the last piece of pie.
Obviously, that’s not hard when the person at the door is elderly, or we’re not in a hurry … the waitress is cute, or we don’t care for that kind of pie. But if the waitress never refilled your glass, or the pie is lemon meringue … the small sacrifice looms a little larger.
What’s harder to understand is why we help strangers at all. When we have no idea whether they’re kind, or decent, or the sort to make their own sacrifices, for whatever stranger happens to cross their path.
What if I’m holding the door for a lady who just yelled at a store clerk … or making room in my lane for a guy who cut off a dozen other people a mile back?
We can’t sacrifice constantly, for everyone – not even the people we love most. Yet sometimes, out of nowhere, comes the irrepressible urge to reach beyond ourselves … and just give some unknown soul a cup of water. To quietly toss a serendipity – or a lifeline – into the hands of someone who may or may not appreciate it, repay it, or ever look on our face again.
A hot January day in South Africa, 1879. Some arrogant officials of the British Empire had recently prodded the Zulu nation into a war, and that morning, on the wide slopes of a hill called Isandlwana, a lot of bloody chickens came home to roost.
Some 1,800 British soldiers and civilians were making breakfast in camp when 20,000 Zulu warriors came charging in upon them. The British had rifles, the Zulus only spears, but as more than one young soldier pointed out, amid the ensuing massacre, “spears don’t run out of bullets.”
Not many British survived the fight (it was England’s equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand), and any man who made it did so by racing for a nearby river, finding some stray horse wandering on the bank, and spurring the mount through the roaring water before one of the omnipresent Zulus could put an assegai through his back.
The story goes that one young soldier, Standish Vereker, managed to catch a horse on the riverbank, swung into the saddle, and turned for the plunge into the river. At that moment – even as Vereker could see dozens of Zulus hurrying down the slope straight for him – two non-Zulu blacks, serving as scouts with the army, came running up to his horse. One seized the bridle and began shouting at Vereker in a dialect he couldn’t fathom.
“I’m sorry,” he said, impatiently. “I can’t understand.”
The other black spoke up, in English. “He says … it’s his horse.”
Vereker gazed down for a long moment at the two men – then up at the Zulus, now only a few yards away, the morning sun glinting on the iron tips of their spears.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, dismounting and tossing the reins to the two men. They leapt on the horse and splashed into the river to safety.
A moment later, a dozen spears ended Vereker’s life.
His death notwithstanding, Romans 12:1 calls that kind of decision “a living sacrifice,” and describes it as our “reasonable service.” It doesn’t often seem so, to perverse, contentious souls like me.
But it’s a sometimes cruel and brutal world. Arrogant officials abound. Violence seethes all about us. Fury. Selfishness. Desperation. Many wonder if anyone will show them any good.
For each of us, a moment is coming. Our chance to step down off the high horse. Or pass along a cup of cold water.
Amid the deluge, or the thick of the fray – or in some lonely, empty moment – may the good Lord lift His countenance upon us.
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