Editor's Note:    It's been our privilege to share Cross Current with you but it's not a privilege we take for granted.  Recognizing that people are busy, circumstances change, and so do tastes, we want to ensure that we're only sending these articles to people who want them.  If you'd like to stay on our mailing list, please send back a quick note letting us know, and feel free to add any suggestions for improvement.  If, for any reason, you'd like to unsubscribe, please let us know.  I promise not to be hurt or offended?  Again, thank you for letting me share my thoughts with you this past year.  I hope you've found something helpful from time to time.  May God bless you with peace, joy and a deeper sense of his Presence in 2004.

In His Service,
Rick

Volume 29, No. 1                                
January 4, 2004

The Golden Touch

   Despite his own stupidity, he had the golden touch.

   Timothy Dexter was a poor Boston tanner who married a rich widow in 1767.  In Zanies:  The World’s Greatest Eccentrics, author Jay Robert Nash describes how Dexter used his wife’s money to play the stock market without a clue, only to grow richer.  Sneering competitors laughed and tried to ruin him with lunatic suggestions.

   One merchant told Dexter the new colonies in the West Indies badly needed mittens, warming pans and Bibles.  Unaware the islands were tropical, Dexter shipped 40,000 pairs of mittens and an equal number of warming pans and Bibles.  Incredibly, a fleet of visiting Russian trading ships bought every pair of mittens!  Since a religious revival had just broken out, the Bibles sold rapidly.  And all the warming pans were purchased by the sugar industry which found they made great skimmers for ladling molasses into giant vats.  Dexter made a whopping $150,000.

   Jealous, his rivals convinced him to invest everything into shipping coal to Newcastle, England.  Since Dexter had no idea Newcastle was the coal capital of Britain, he sent dozens of ships full of Virginia coal. Amazingly, they  arrived just after a massive mining strike had created a critical shortage.  Dexter grew twice as rich!

   When his wife, Elizabeth, talked to him relentlessly about his foolish ways, Dexter convinced himself she was dead and that her presence in his mansion was an apparition.  He introduced visitors to her by saying, “This is Mrs. Dexter, the ghost that was my wife.”

   But most eccentric of all was Dexter’s memoirs, A Pickle for theKnowing Ones.  From start to finish, it was a single, incoherent sentence without punctuation.  Answering his critics, Dexter published a second edition that included a whole page of commas and periods so readers could add them where they pleased.  People scoffed but Dexter had the last laugh — the book is now a rare collector’s item.

   Dexter’s story holds some keen reminders for Christians, the Knowing Ones, in a pickle.  For starters, we, too, have come into riches we didn’t earn. “It’s God who saved us and chose us to live a holy life... not because we deserved it, but... to show us his love and kindness through Christ Jesus.” (2 Tim. 1:9).  Yet we repeatedly make bad decisions, listening to the echo of our ego or the bad, sometimes malicious advice of people whose approval we crave.  We’re also good at denying reality, even when the evidence is right in front of us.  We dismiss those who try the hardest to help us.  But thanks to the grace and goodwill of God, we don’t always get our just desserts and even bad decisions can yield good results.

   “Don’t be misled,” Paul warns.  “You can’t ignore God and get away with it.  You’ll always reap what you sow.” (Gal. 6:7).  But I’m always amazed at how often our steadfast Father rescues us from our own foolishness, especially when it springs from a heart that’s still struggling to be more holy. He saves us from our sin, once and for all, but He saves us from ourselves continually.  Why?

   He “causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Rom. 8:28)  He’s our Dad and nothing can make him stop loving us.  “Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away.” (v. 38).  In other words, grace didn’t end at the Cross. For every time God lets us suffer the consequences of our choices so we learn from our mistakes, there are many times He works our messes into miracles big and small, not just to bail us out, but to clue us in that He has a specific purpose for us.

   As you write the story of your life day to day, let Him show you where to put the punctuation — when to stop, where to begin again and what to emphasize. Trust his heart.  Take his hand.  In the only way that matters, you can have the golden Touch.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca