Scriburgy

(1 Corinthians 13:11) When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Once there was a father who had two sons. The father was a faithful man and an artist of some renown. The firstborn son was halfway to forty; the youngest, a mere four winters.

One day the boys decided together to honor their father with drawings made with their own hands. So they gathered up colored pencils, sketch pads and set to work. The young artisans relished this exercise, and when they were both finished, took their drawings in hand and set out across the backyard to their father’s studio.

Once inside their father’s workplace, the younger son excitedly blurted out, “Favver, I love you bery much, and I want you to have this pictured that I drawed wif my own two handses for you.”

The father examined the drawing carefully, taking in each line, proportion, shade and color with his practiced eye. After a full minute he dropped to his knees, and smiling broadly, embraced his youngest and said, “Nice work son. I am very pleased.”

After a minute or so, the father stood up to receive and evaluate the offering of his eldest, who said, “I too just wanted you to know how much I love and respect you Pop.”

Just as before, the artist scanned the page carefully, but this time, his countenance fell. As he silently composed himself, the drawing slipped from his hand and floated gently to the floor.

“Son” the father began slowly, “I am certainly pleased to call you my son, and pleased at your desire to honor me. But this drawing, quite frankly, is grievous.”

Stung by his father’s critique, the eldest son picked up his drawing from off the floor, snatched the drawing of his younger brother and held up them, side by side, before his father’s face.

“I mean no disrespect sir” he spluttered, “but how can you pleased by my brother’s offering and grieved by my own when they are nearly identical?”

“My son” gently intoned the father, “I am grieved precisely because they are, as you say, nearly identical. Your brother is barely four years old and his drawing is the fitting effort of one so young. But you, the son of my youth, are five times his age, yet your drawing is scarcely the better of the two. If this is the token of your affection for me, I am sorry, but I cannot help but feel slighted, even maligned by your offering.”

As the older son stared sullenly at the floor, the father continued, “And we both know that your artistic ignorance is self-imposed. How many times have you studied and traced the lines of the master painters contained in the books on my shelves? How many times have you consulted my own books on drawing? How many times have you asked or allowed me to guide your hand with my own?” The elder brother’s silence testified to his slothful neglect.

“My son, you have confused spontaneity with skill; emotion with maturity; confused enthusiasm with experience and good intention with glorious execution. If you truly wanted to honor me, instead of honoring yourself honoring me, then you would have offered me something more consistent with my refined sensibilities and less like your sophomoric scribblings.”

At this the older son turned and left his father’s studio, but strangely enough, he wasn’t angry or annoyed, distracted or even the slightest bit dissuaded from his course. You see he really liked scribbling, and that was the point after all. Wasn’t it?


As we continue to learn how to worship God in ways pleasing to Him, may He grant us grace to study His book, to imitate the liturgical graces of our fathers and in all things to grow up into our Head who is the Lord Jesus Christ.