Nicki and Larry
Half way down the stairs is the stair where I sit
There isn’t any other stair quite like it
So wrote A. A. Milne, his words made more famous by that grinning green frog Kermit of The Muppets fame. Recently, I found myself humming that little ditty every Sunday when I show up for church, although it’s not part of our worship set.
It because that’s where I always find my friend Larry. He’ll be parked in his usual place, half way down the stairs in the entrance foyer of our church. He’s standing, though, not sitting, because he’s a man on a mission.
Larry has been rather good with missions impossible, embracing challenges both large and small. An extremely minor mission of his involves him cutting my hair. A gifted hairdresser, he is usually given more to work with than I can offer, but he manages to do the best job humanly possible with the rapidly shrinking peninsula I call my hairstyle. But his hairdressing has led to some life altering, church transforming encounters. Decades ago he was the stylist for Nicki, a bright, beautiful girl who was paying her way through college by removing her clothes for ogling men at a local strip club. I’ve written about Nicki elsewhere, but her coming to our church triggered the beginning of a wonderful, messy influx of people who were rather more obviously lost than most lost people. There’s no doubt that the huge growth in our church was launched by Nicki’s arrival and immediate, dramatic conversion. She read the entire New Testament through in three or four days, and then, when she got baptised, she invited her friends to come and watch. They closed the club down the night Nicki got baptised, and some of her friends decided to become followers of Jesus too. Thus the mushrooming growth began. These days, when asked how our church blossomed, I rather naughtily comment that we got a stripper in.
But all of that was almost thirty years ago. Yet Larry, now a sprightly 70+ year old who wears trendy clothes and sports a cool white goatee beard, refuses to live on yesterday’s stories. And so he parks himself on the landing, half way down those stairs because he’s on the lookout. He scans the teeming crowd of gathering worshippers, searching for the people that he’s invited to come to church during the week. Then there are new Christians that he’s informally discipling; folks he wants to make sure he greets; others he’s on the lookout for to sit next to because they’re alone, or just encourage because he knows that they’ve been through a rough season.
Larry hasn’t had the benefit of a smoothly running life. He spent a number of years living in his hairdressing salon because couldn’t afford a business and a home. But he has no time for looking back, or for that matter, endlessly looking forward. He’s committed to a laugh out loud attitude towards each new day that comes, living in the here and now, soaking up the gravy from the plate of each moment. And that means giving rather than grabbing. This caring people-watcher could be forgiven for wanting his own space at the weekends, seeing as he spends his days chatting with one client after another while he attends to their hair. I sometimes wonder how much he has to endure the same basic are you busy/can you believe those politicians/which football team do you support conversations. Some solitude would be good. But often I’ll find him sitting in two services, singing the same songs, listening to the repeated message, because from his stairway vantage point, he’s spotted someone in need of company.
Years ago, Led Zeppelin sang about a lady who was buying a stairway to heaven. But those who follow Jesus know well that all the trillions in the world wouldn’t buy a stairway to that place: even the access-all-areas rich and famous can’t flash any cash to gain entrance there. Instead, the way has been made open by the Jesus who came down, down and down again, navigating the inexplicable gap between the throne of heaven and manger of Bethlehem, opening the way by grace alone. That same Jesus went on the lookout for unlikely people like Peter and John, outcasts like Zacchaeus, and people who felt their souls were terminally stained, like that woman at the well.
His eyes settled on those that everyone else ignored: women, who were viewed as second class citizens; children, who were thought of as possessions more than people. He saw them, spoke their names, and they felt His eyes upon them, looks of pure love.
So here’s to Larry, and many like him, who live life on the lookout, scanning the crowd for someone who needs a smile.
Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit. There isn't any other stair quite like it.
I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top; so this is the stair where I always stop.
Keep doing that Larry. Keep stopping and looking.