Agrippa

THERE'S SOMETHING A LITTLE SAD about seeing anybody for the last time, even somebody you were never particularly crazy about to begin with. Agrippa, for instance. He was the last of the Herods, and after him that rather unsavory dynasty came to an end. 

When Saint Paul was on his way to Rome to stand trial, King Agrippa granted him a hearing, and Paul, who was seldom at a loss for words, put up a strong defense. He described how on the road to Damascus he had come to believe Jesus was the Messiah and how all he had been doing since was trying to persuade other people to believe he was right. He said the fact the Jews were out to get him showed only that they didn't understand their own Scriptures, because the whole thing was right there, including the prediction that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead just the way Jesus had. 

After Paul finished, Agrippa came out with the only remark he ever made that has gone down in history. "Almost thou persuadest me to become a Christian," he said (Acts 26:28). 

Almost is apt to be a sad word under the best of circumstances, and here, on the lips of the last of his line the last time you see him, it has a special poignance. If only Paul had been a little more eloquent. If only Agrippa had been a little more receptive, a little braver, a little crazier. If only God weren't such a stickler for letting people make up their own minds without forcing their hands. But things are what they are, and almost is the closest Agrippa ever got to what might have changed his life. It's sad enough to miss the boat at all, but to miss it by inches, with a saint right there to hand you aboard, is sadder still. 

Acts 26:1-28, KJV

- Originally published in Peculiar Treasures 

Agnostic

AN AGNOSTIC IS SOMEBODY who doesn't know for sure whether there really is a God. That is some people all of the time and all people some of the time. 

There are some agnostics who don't know simply because they've never taken pains to try to find out—like the bear who didn't know what was on the other side of the mountain. 

There are other agnostics who have taken many pains. They have climbed over the mountain, and what do you think they saw? Only the other side of the mountain. At least that was all they could be sure of. That faint glimmer on the far horizon could have been just Disneyland. 

- Originally published in Wishful Thinking

Aging

WHEN YOU HIT SIXTY or so, you start having a new feeling about your own generation. Like you they can remember the Trilon and Perisphere, Lum and Abner, ancient Civil War veterans riding in open cars at the rear of Memorial Day parades, the Lindbergh kidnapping, cigarettes in flat fifties which nobody believed then could do any more to you than cut your wind. Like you they know about blackouts, Bond Rallies, A-stickers, Kilroy was Here. They remember where they were when the news came through that FDR was dead of a stroke in Warm Springs, and they could join you in singing "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon" and "The Last Time I Saw Paris." They wept at Spencer Tracy with his legs bitten off in Captains Courageous. 

As time goes by, you start picking them out in crowds. There aren't as many of them around as there used to be. More likely than not, you don't say anything, and neither do they, but something seems to pass between you anyhow. They have come from the same beginning. They have seen the same sights along the way. They are bound for the same end and will get there about the same time you do. There are some who by the looks of them you wouldn't invite home for dinner on a bet, but they are your compagnons de voyage even so. You wish them well. 

It is sad to think that it has taken you so many years to reach so obvious a conclusion. 

- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark

Agag

ACCORDING TO THE PROPHET SAMUEL, God wanted King Saul to wipe out every last one of the Amalekites—not just the men, but the women and children, the babies and the residents of the old folks home. When he heard that Saul had decided to spare the Amalekite king, Agag, he was so enraged that he tore the royal robe from Saul's back and told him to consider it a mild fore- taste of how God would tear the kingdom of Israel from him next. He then had them drag out poor Agag, who was quick to size up the situation. With something less than total conviction, he said, "Surely the bitterness of death is past" (1 Samuel 15:32). Within seconds Samuel had personally hacked him to pieces to prove that God meant what Samuel said that he said. 

Since Agag had hacked quite a few people to pieces himself in his day, he may well have been dismayed by the experience, but can hardly have been surprised. What was perhaps new to him was the length to which the friends of God will go to make God enemies. 

1 Samuel 15

- Originally published in Peculiar Treasures

Advent

THE HOUSE LIGHTS GO OFF and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised the baton. 

In the silence of a midwinter dusk there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. 

You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you've never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart. 

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment. 

The Salvation Army Santa Claus clangs his bell. The sidewalks are so crowded you can hardly move. Exhaust fumes are the chief fragrance in the air, and everybody is as bundled up against any sense of what all the fuss is really about as they are bundled up against the windchill factor. 

But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.  

- Originally published in Whistling in the Dark