Not Worth The Lead It Would Take To Shoot Him

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

For years I went around saying, "He/she is not worth the lead it would take to shoot him/her."
I said that about everybody I deemed hopeless.

My dear wife would tell me over and over that nobody is hopeless. It didn't make any difference, I kept saying it.

One day it finally sunk in. There is hope for everybody as long as God is alive. Everybody has worth! So as slow as I am---I finally stopped saying those things. Oh, I slip now and then. Some people "drive me up a wall" and I let it slip out---He's not worth the lead it would take to shoot him! But most of the time I try to be more patient with people and leave them to God.

HOPE WITHOUT PATIENCE results in the illusion of optimism or, more terrifying, the desperation of fanaticism. The hope necessary to initiate us into the adventure must be schooled by patience if the adventure is to be sustained. Through patience, we learn to continue to hope, even though our hope seems to offer little chance of fulfillment. … Yet patience equally requires hope, for without hope, patience too easily accepts the world and the self for what it is, rather than what it can or should be.Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character