RELIEF SOCIETY COLUMN
In His Language
He was fifteen and I was fifty, but age makes no difference when two people speak the same language.
I was at his home visiting. He came to the back door and shouted, “Oh Aunt Mary, come see him, come see my horse.” He sat on the horse as proudly as a knight. Animation, joy and love danced in his beautiful dark eyes. He said, “Ain’t he a beauty Aunt Mary?” “Yes, he is a beauty.” In the eyes of a judge of fine horses he would have been called a scrub, but in the eyes of his faithful, loving friend, the boy, he was tops. “See him go” and he galloped across the vacant lot and back.
“What did you pay for him?” I asked. “Fifteen dollars and I earned every cent myself. I pay two dollars a month to pasture him down by the Fair Grounds. I ride him all over, up the low hills and down to the surplus canals. Oh, I’m so glad I’ve got him.”
This boy doesn’t get along in school. He has been suspended from his classes. His teachers have told him to get out because he is a menace. This boy with so much vitality and life; with so much love for a horse has become a social outcast because those with whom he associates cannot speak his language.
Once before, a long time ago, a little boy loved horses to the exclusion of every other interest, but the mother and the teacher got together. The teacher talked the language of the boy, horse language, horse sense.
I was watching a young friend in his garden. He was down on his knees with his ear close to the grass and flowers as if he could hear what they were saying. He scratched the earth here a little, plucked off a dead leaf yonder, lovingly lifted a blue bell shaped flower and said, “Isn’t it gorgeous? Last year it was a failure. I discovered I watered it too much. It likes a dry south exposure.”
He showed me the rest of the garden. It was laid out in many narrow beds with borders of low growing plants and taller plants in the center. There were single bulbs of iris in the various beds. I said, “Tell me about your iris.”
“When they are through blooming I dig them up and separate the roots, leaving only one bulb in each hill. Then I get a superior bloom.”
He explained for an hour the habits and nature and common names of his beloved plants. He had failed in his botany class in college because he had not learned the classical names of his plants.
The traffic light had flashed red. A great crowd on the busy thoroughfare waited for the green light. A poor little friendless lost dog stood shivering and looking longingly into the faces of the crowd. No one paid any attention to him.
A woman came along, she was swathed in furs, jewelry, powder, paint and henna. She, too, was lonely; she called the poor dog to the side of the pavement and patted it and caressed it and talked dog language to it. The surging crowd moved on with the green light. The woman swathed in fur, and jewels, powder and paint, and henna, remained alone with the little lost dog.
How many rough knotty problems could be solved if we would talk in the language of our fellow men. The great Master learned the art. We have so many beautiful examples in our Gospels. Jesus knew the language of the fishermen, the tax collector, the lawyer, the merchant, keeper of the vineyard, the shepherd children and all types of women.
When he wished to impart a great abstract truth he clothed it in concrete terms or in terms of the hearer’s experience. He said to the fisherman on the shore of Galilee, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” To the people who knew wealth, he said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.” Continues in Math. 6, read it.
The Master sat at meat with publicans and sinners. Note his reply to the Pharisees, Matt. 9. Read the whole chapter. Note the Master refers to new wine in old bottles. In his days the skin of the kid and goat were sewed up and made into a receptacle called a bottle which was used to hold wine.
Read His short stories:
The Tares, Matt. 13, 24–30;
The Hid Treasure, Matt. 13, 44;
The Goodly Pearl, Matt. 13, 45–46;
The Draw Net, Matt. 13, 47–48;
The Unmerciful Servant, Matt. 18, 23–34;
The Laborers in the Vineyard, Matt. 20, 1–16.
Note in these short stories that the Master talked in terms of his listener’s experience. That is what makes a perfect short story.
I hope your Bible reading this month will be instructive and very helpful.
… Lottie C. Hatch