The Bearded Bulldogs

“God bless the school that D.L. Moody founded…” is sung to a grandiose pipe organ inside the auditorium of my alma mater. The instrument sprawls behind the stage like a brassy mountain range and has the cathedral-like effect of making you feel like a minnow thrown into the Pacific. 

The school’s intricate architecture makes you think D.L. Moody must have really been something. And he was. But not in the new car kind of way. He was more squeaky than smooth. In one biography, the author tells his impression of the shoe salesmen turned evangelist: 

“The first meeting I ever saw him at was in a little old shanty that had been abandoned by a saloon-keeper. Mr. Moody had got the place to hold the meetings at night. I went there a little late; and the first thing I saw was a man standing up with a few tallow candles around him, holding a negro boy, and trying to read to him the story of the Prodigal Son and a great many words he could not readout, and had to skip. I thought, ‘If the Lord can ever use such an instrument as that for His honor and glory, it will astonish me.’ As a result of his tireless labor, within a year the average attendance at his school was 650, while 60 volunteers from various churches served as teachers. It became so well known that the just-elected President Lincoln visited and spoke at a Sunday School meeting on November 25, 1860.” (Johnson, George D. What Will a Man Give for his Soul) 

Moody was aware of his shortcomings, they just didn’t hold him back. To one critic he replied,

“It is clear you don’t like my way of doing evangelism. You raise some good points. Frankly, I sometimes do not like my way of doing evangelism. But I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.” 

There is something heroic in people when they throw off fetters of fear like unnecessary layers of clothing and pursue the girl, the dream, the goal, the God. They spot something worth the risk; a treasure that sparkles more than self. Any insecurities they had cradled turn feather-light when their eyes are on the prize. 

And it must be a prize to fuel the Moodys of the world. I am so attracted to these sorts of bulldogs that I married one of them. My husband, who happens to be just as bearded as the man Moody, can laugh over mistakes as if they were mere crumbs on the table. He takes risks not for the thrill of danger, but because he knows he’s safely held. His identity is fixed like a fly in cement. His heart yields a rubber edge that allows it to swiftly bounce back from a fall. He understands that the ball only goes where the man bounces it. He acts like my three-year-old who moves in and out of my arms with ease because she knows she is entirely wanted. Not only wanted, but enjoyed. 

I don’t have a rubber edge- I bounce back like a wad of chewed Bubblicious. My moves are small and calculated. I wait for just the right moment to act. Moments when my second language is working, when my living room looks as minimalist as it can with six treasure-collecting kids, and when I haven’t just barked at my husband. I avoid team sports because where’s the fun in letting people down? If someone surprises me when my toilets are seedy, I die just a little. I delete pages of writing because it looks like sentimental sludge. I can be a perfectionist. More accurately, I am proud as punch and crushed by a boulder of fear. 

The view from under such a rock can look bleak. Did God give some people extra doses of resilience and grit, while what I have to work with looks like the pebbles in David’s palm before Goliath? Do I need to grow thicker skin and just get to work? Do I need to meet Jesus half-way to taste change? I too want a chance to run in the field of God’s world with my arms extended, a laugh in my throat. 

Instead of greater effort or frenzied urgency, I can follow the footsteps of the free. People who no longer belong to themselves (1 Cor 6:19, Rom 14:7-8), but like Isaiah in the throne room of Heaven, see Christ and can’t help but cry out, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)

The freest people in the world are those whose eyes keep turning to Jesus. When our anger hurts others, we look to Christ. When our despair is miles away from lament, we look to Christ. When we’re proud of a project completed, we look to Christ. 

What we see will make us active and stouthearted, like Moody and Micah. Not because God has given us a to-do list to get checked, but because we simply get to. In the same way people relish food after fasting, retell the tales of heroes, and hold Olympians on their shoulders, all the more we exalt Christ. We can’t help but marvel at what is marvelous. And we become living, breathing people, not wallflowers avoiding sports and scouring toilets before company sees the rings. Although the personalities inside the Church could color a rainbow, when we see Christ, we’ll find the freedom to stretch our legs and try.