This morning’s word is Small Reachings.
The Atlantic hurricane season opened yesterday. Today is a different kind of weather. Today is the season of a small reaching across a fence.
In Lakewood, Ohio this spring, an eight-year-old girl named Madeline heard her neighbor playing guitar in his yard. His name is Ethan Hayes. He is twenty-six and a full-time musician. Madeline was too shy to walk over and ask him directly for a song. With her parents’ help, she wrote her request on a piece of paper, folded it into a paper airplane, and threw it over the fence.
Ethan found the note. He picked up his guitar. He played the song Madeline had asked for. He played Love Story by Taylor Swift. Madeline sang along.
Her mother filmed it. Her mother posted the video. The video went viral. The video reached Taylor Swift. Swift sent Madeline a signed guitar and a handwritten note. She sent Ethan a guitar too. The note to Madeline thanked her for asking her neighbor to play the song. Swift wrote that the video had made her happy and that Madeline had brought the biggest smile to her face. She told Madeline she was sending her own guitar in case she ever wanted to learn to play.
A note. A paper airplane. A song. A response. Three lives connected that did not know each other yesterday.
That is the shape of every relationship. Marriage included.
I have been married for many years. The relationship did not start with many years. It started with one small reaching across one small fence. A note. A response. A song. The beginning is small. The growth is something neither person can yet measure.
Scripture this morning teaches what sustained relationship requires. The teachings come from four different readings. Each one names a discipline.
Ignatius of Antioch writes from chains on his way to die in Rome and tells a small church to preserve harmony. He uses the Greek word homonoia. Same-mind. The music of two voices choosing to sound together. And he says: do not look at one another after the flesh. Do not stop at the surface. See the person who is there with you.
That is the first discipline. Deeper seeing.
Jesus in the Gospel of John speaks to religious leaders who studied the Scriptures with great care but missed the One the Scriptures testify about. “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that in them you possess eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me.” The reading must mature. The eye must learn to see what the words are pointing toward.
That is the second discipline. Evolving sight.
Karen Roudkovski teaches that Peter’s command to cast your anxiety on HIM is not one cast. She watched fly fishermen in Colorado. The fly fisherman casts and pulls back. Casts again. Casts again. The worries return. The casting keeps happening. The release is a practice, not an event.
That is the third discipline. Repeated release.
And Naaman, commander of the army of Aram, almost missed his healing because he wanted it grander than what the prophet asked. Elisha sent word: go dip seven times in the Jordan. The Jordan was a muddy river. Naaman expected the dramatic gesture. He got a chore. His servants reasoned with him. He went down. He dipped seven times. His flesh was restored.
That is the fourth discipline. Willingness to dip in muddy water.
Four readings. Four disciplines. One teaching.
Sustained relationship requires deeper seeing, evolving sight, repeated release, and willingness to do the small ordinary thing without needing recognition.
There is a German word for the deeper seeing. The word is Verstehen. It comes from the sociology of Max Weber and the long tradition of trying to understand human meaning from the inside rather than from the outside. Verstehen is what happens when more data, more readings, more lenses, and more time produce understanding that no single moment could have produced. It is not knowledge of facts. It is knowledge of a person. Or a Person.
GOD knows us this way. GOD reads us with Verstehen. GOD does not stop at the surface of who we are today. GOD sees the long unfolding. GOD sees who we have been and who we are becoming and who we will be when this season ends and the next one begins.
Marriage at its best is a practice of Verstehen. The husband and wife who keep seeing each other after many years are doing what Ignatius asked. They are reading each other not after the flesh. They are seeing the person who has been beside them across seasons. They are not finished knowing each other. They are still maturing in how they see.
Madeline does not yet know what many years of marriage look like. She knows what the first note across the fence sounds like. Her marriage, if she marries one day, will begin with a small reaching like the one she made of paper.
Madeline does not need to know yet. Neither does the neighbor. Neither does Taylor Swift. Neither do you.
Whatever relationship you are inside today, whatever fence you are tossing your paper airplane over, however many years you have been doing this, the disciplines are the same. See deeper. Read longer. Cast and recast. Be willing to dip in the muddy river.
The hurricane season has begun. The marriage season never stops.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
Love Story — Taylor Swift
The song Madeline asked her neighbor to play. Taylor Swift wrote it when she was eighteen years old. It was the lead single from her 2008 album Fearless. The song is framed around Romeo and Juliet and the daring of young love. It is not a song about many years of marriage. It is a song about the first note across the fence. That is the right register for the news anchor. Madeline knows what the beginning sounds like. The discipline of forever is taught in the body of the word. Listen on YouTube →
Always and Forever — Heatwave
Rod Temperton wrote this song in 1976 for the band Heatwave. Temperton was the keyboardist. He would later write Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Rock With You. Heatwave was a multinational band whose members had met as US Army musicians stationed in West Germany. They rehearsed in a building with a radiator that oozed heat even in summer, which gave them their name. The song was the follow-up to their disco hit Boogie Nights. It has been one of the most-recorded wedding songs of the last fifty years. Luther Vandross sang it. Silk sang it. Couples have danced to it at receptions for half a century. It is the song of long staying. Listen on YouTube →