In Bible times, a person’s name represented his character, according to Henry Blackaby in Experiencing God Day by Day. If you knew someone’s name, you knew what the person was like.
He points to Abram to illustrate this.
The Lord wanted to bless all the nations through Abram, but Abram’s character was too weak for such a great task. Although God promised him (Genesis 12:1-3) that He would make his name great so he would bless future generations, it took the next 25 years of God developing Abraham’s character to match the new name He had given him.
Not particularly true today that our names reflect our character and that they change in our life to reflect the changes. However, what is true is the main point of Blackaby’s statement. As he says it, “God sees your life from His eternal perspective. He will take whatever time is necessary to grow your character to match His assignment for you.”
I recently was referred to a book I can’t believe I never read before, given my love of ranches, Colorado and horses – Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers, an autobiography by Ralph Moody.
Ralph was born in 1898. The setting for this autobiography in 1906 has him as an 8-year-old. It starts with them moving from a city in New Hampshire to a piece of land near Ft. Logan, Colorado. They had moved here because his father had developed tuberculosis and they sought a dry climate. Expecting to find a working ranch when they arrived, it was instead the barest beginning of one and they had a lot of building to do.
It is a wonderful story, well-written, and a true autobiography worth your time to read and share with your family if you have young-un’s (I got into the vernacular of the times reading it). I was amazed at how “hooked” I was. I had only picked it up to read it to see if my grandson might enjoy it. I couldn’t put it down.
But what I want to share is one of the key points that stuck with me – so well-illustrated that I will keep it in the forefront of my mind and my “conflict work” wisdom files.
Ralph, the 8-year-old boy whose story is being told, lied to his sister and mother telling them that Father, who had gone to town, told him to drag some discarded railroad ties home as soon as they got another horse. Acquiring that horse had just happened a few days earlier.
The ties had been thrown in a gulch at the side of a railroad track at the far edge of their property. He was sure he could have a crosstie home before Father got back so Father would be so proud of him that he wouldn’t get spanked at all for the lie. They had talked about how the ties would be good firewood for them.
Sound familiar? Whatever the circumstances – our intentions are good, we want to look good, etc. So let’s just “bend” those rules that we are sure don’t need to be applied to “this” situation.
Of course, the crossties didn’t haul as easily as he had thought they would. And he forgot to take anything along for hitching them to the horse’s singletree (the crossbar on a horse to which traces are attached in a horse-drawn wagon or plow). Thus, he had to use barbed wire that was available. And it didn’t go well – ending up in the big crosstie rolling downhill toward him so he dived out of the way. The result was a skinned nose and the barbed wire tearing a big hole in his overalls. Plus the tie just was not getting hauled up that hill as easily as he thought. Finally, darkness overtook him. He had to face going home and telling his Mother he lied – and he knew if she spanked him first, he probably would get another one from Father right on top of it when he arrived home.
But his mother didn’t spank him – as he described it, she gasped and looked at him like he was a rattlesnake ready to strike. Then she made him stand in the corner while the other youngsters (he was the oldest boy) had supper and went to bed. Afterwards, she sat at the table and he heard her pull the Bible down from the shelf with the only other sound in the room he described as the thumping of his own heart.
When at last his father was home, every sound was dreadfully clear as he put the team away and came to the house. When he entered the room, Father asked what had happened in a quiet voice, having observed the grave situation. Mother also talked quietly saying it was time for a “father’s firm hand” as she was “appalled by the degeneracy he has shown”. As Ralph describes it, he had never heard her voice like that and he thought his heart would pound itself to pieces while she told Father what he had done.
But the powerful piece was this description – he said as hard as Father could spank, he never hurt him so much with a stick as he did when his mother stopped talking. Father cleared his throat and then didn’t make a sound for at least two full minutes.
Does this sound familiar to anyone else? The dread, the unknown, knowing you have “messed up”?
But what his father said and did next was the most powerful piece – I have to quote it directly for you to get the full impact:
When he spoke, his voice was deep and dry, and I knew he must have been coughing a lot on the way home. “Son, there is no question but what the thing you have done today deserves severe punishment. You might have killed yourself or the horse, but much worse than that, you have injured your own character. A man’s character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn’t do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin. A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth.”
He waited until his words had plenty of time to soak in, then he said, “I might give you a hard thrashing; if I did, you would possibly remember the thrashing longer than you would remember about the injury you have done yourself. I am not going to do it. There were eighteen crossties in the gulch yesterday, and the section foreman told me they were going to replace twenty more. Until you have dragged every one of those ties home, you will wear your Buster Brown suit to school, and I will not take you anywhere with me.”
OK, there had been a real issue between the Mother wanting Ralph to wear his Buster Brown suit to the school despite all the other boys wearing overalls and Father had gone to bat for him to wear the overalls.
But the power of his words and the point were HUGE to me. The character emphasis – wow!
But Father didn’t stop there. Evidently it was a half mile from the house to the gulch where the ties were. He showed Ralph how to hook onto the ties (with a chain, not barbed wire) and pull them through the right part of the gulch, not straight uphill. So he equipped him with the knowledge needed to do the task – and it was not an easy task. Ralph had to get up early, drag one tie home each morning and then two more after school. Adding on Saturdays, he finished the job in a couple of weeks.
Hard weeks. He would be teased again at school for wearing the Buster Brown suit. And the windy and cold weather filled the gulch with tumbleweeds which scratched him as he dug through to get the ties.
But he described “worst of all” was that his Mother “got a song in her head” – meaning she sang it over and over. He said he couldn’t go into the house without hearing it. A couple of phrases were “a young life broken by sin’s seductive art” and “the soul that sin hath stricken never soars so high again”.
He said it made him think a lot, as he walked along behind the horse and dragged a crosstie, about the permanent damage he had already done to his character.
Back to Blackaby’s illustration – it took 25 years before God entrusted Abraham with his first son and set in motion the establishment of the nation of Israel. But God stayed true to His word – thousands of years later people continue to be blessed by the account of Abraham’s life and by his descendant, Jesus. Many, many character-building experiences can be found as you trail Abraham in scripture.
And throughout Little Britches Ralph gets into scrapes where he thinks about whether he will tear a board off his “character” by the action he is contemplating or situation he is in. It stayed with him throughout his life and comes through loud and clear in his 1950 publication of the book (not sure when he wrote it).
So I am left with, and share with you, Blackaby’s great personal questions from all of this:
Do you sense God has a task for you that will require a far greater man or woman than you presently are?
Will you yield to God as He works in your life to prepare you for your next assignment?
Sometimes it helps to have fellow believers walk through these questions with you – may you find them and have fruitful time together!
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