A Message to Garcia

May you be brought honor and glory through this story Father. I ask that you wouldn't be silent. Speak to us, as we desperately need it. It's in your name, Amen.

A Message to Garcia

In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba--no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his co-operation, and quickly. What to do!

Some one said to the President, "There is a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can." Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How the "fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia--are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book- learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing--"Carry a message to Garcia."

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man-- the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant.

You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office--six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request: "Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio." Will the clerk quietly say, "Yes, sir," and go do the task? On your life he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions:

Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don't you mean Bismarck?
What's the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is he dead?
Is there any hurry?
Shan't I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
What do you want to know for?

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia-- and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average I will not. Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your "assistant" that Corregio is indexed under the C's, not in the K's, but you will smile very sweetly and say, "Never mind," and go look it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift--these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate--and do not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia? "You see that bookkeeper," said the foreman to me in a large factory.

"Yes, what about him?"

"Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him uptown on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for." Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the "downtrodden denizens of the sweatshop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment," and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne'er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving after "help" that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every story and factory there is a constant weeding out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away "help" that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only, if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer--but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best--those who can carry the message to Garcia.

I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him. He can not give orders, and he cannot receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, "Take it yourself!" Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.

Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless. ¶Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds--the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner-pale and worked for a day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and highhanded, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long, anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted He is wanted in every city, town and village--in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed and needed badly--the man who can "Carry a Message to Garcia." (Taken from http://people.whitman.edu/~hashimiy/garcia.htm on Tuesday January 13, 2009)

I was required to read this text for my Senior Seminar class at Colorado Christian University. I love it. The odd thing is, I don't really know why. You ever feel that way? You see a movie, read a good story, bump into someone and instantly feel a spirit of peace and satisfaction...but you don't know why. With that said, I won't try to elaborate on my feelings just yet. Until next time...

For The Kingdom

Father, as I contemplate my own thoughts and search my heart for what needs to be said I ask for your Spirit to rise within me so your voice will be heard over mine. It's for your kingdom, Amen.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. God said 'let there be light' and there was light..." (Gen. 1:1-3)

I heard a quote once that said God is so magnificent that even nothing obeys Him. This quote was rooted in this very passage because as we read, the earth was "formless and empty" so God gave commands in order to bring life to "nothingness." I've always thought it was a good quote, but something about it stirred my Spirit the wrong way. As I have thought about it and prayed through it what I have come to believe is that God didn't command "nothing", He commanded the "Spirit of God" which was hovering above the watery abyss. The Spirit obeyed and created everything in which God had asked of it, and, as the story continues, God looks over every creation and deems it to be "good."

The "Spirit of God" often gets negated in many church services. We tend to label it as a "guide" and our "helping hand" throughout life, and I feel like we're doing a disservice to the kingdom when we put the Spirit in such a small box. Looking at passages like the one found in Genesis I don't understand how we can believe that the Spirit is something so small when at the beginning of the world it hovered above all creation. And, not only did it hover above it, it somehow took part within creation.

In the book of Ezekiel when God is speaking to Elijah He tells him that "...I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." (Ezek. 36:26-27)

What an honor. Sometimes I forget the idea that deep within me lives the Spirit of God. The same Spirit which took part in creation, the Spirit which was created within Elijah, the same Spirit which descended upon Jesus, lives inside of me.

A few weeks ago I was with a good friend of mine who said something to me as I was leaving that I still, to this day, cannot get out of my head. He looked at me and said "Adam, change the world."

Change the world.

A phrase with such depth and meaning behind it but is slowly becoming just another Christian euphemism. Anymore, we tend to use this phrase as a benediction after a church service so we get all fired up and make the choice to change the world. What I have come to understand is that my buddy wasn't giving me a benediction, he was giving me a reminder. What he was really saying wasn't "Adam, go change the world", but "Adam, you will change the world."

What I realize is that "changing the world" isn't a choice we need to make, but a choice we need to live with. Everything I do reflects something about who I am, what I believe about God, and how I think about others. The choices I make, the thoughts I entertain can't help but be expressed in my every day actions, and, it's my every day actions that change the world. I don't get to choose whether or not I will change the world, but I do have the responsibility of choosing whether or not my choices will help, or hinder the Kingdom of God.

I carry deep within me a flame. A flame which is given to me by God in hopes that I might take its light into the dark corners of the world. A flame which was given to me in hopes that rather than smoldering it with bad choices might grow brighter with each choice I make that exalts the glory of God. A flame that is given to us to be shared with the world, in hopes that our flame will be so bright it will light those around us.

May we, as a community, choose to use our flames to light up the darkness in the world. May we choose to share the gift which was so graciously bestowed within us in hopes of advancing the Kingdom of God. May we choose to be satisfied with the choices we make, and extend grace toward the choices others choose to make.

You will change the world...

Shalom.