E-Book, Englisch, 180 Seiten
Ford Sandy
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8308-6962-6
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
E-Book, Englisch, 180 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-8308-6962-6
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Leighton Ford is president of Leighton Ford Ministries, which seeks to help young leaders worldwide to lead more like Jesus. For many years, Ford communicated Christ around the globe through speaking, writing and media outreach with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, includingTransforming Leadership.
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The Boy with No Yellow Light
He was born in a hurry. He pushed out of Jeanie’s womb just minutes after she arrived at Presbyterian Hospital in the fall of 1960. And he lived as he was born, with terrific intensity.
Holding tightly to Jeanie’s hand on a hot, clear August day, he walked to his first day of school. As they walked up the half-dozen steps into the school, he looked into her face and said, “Mom, I’ll make ’s every day of my life.” And he almost did. He always had a new goal, a new activity, a new standard to reach.
Once when he was little we were at the Fairmeadows Swimming Club, and I told him to put his head under the water. Uncertain and puzzled, both wanting and not wanting to do it, he put his hand on top of his head and tried to push himself under.
He seldom stood still. But it was eagerness, not hyperactivity. I can still see him the first year he played basketball at the YMCA. As the other little boys stood still waiting for the attempt at a foul shot, Sandy jumped and bounced—nonstop.
There was no coasting, no getting by, no medium range with Sandy. It was all out or full stop. He was impulsive, and I used to get impatient with him. “Pal, you have no yellow light! Take it easy!”
He loved sports. He loved to watch, and he loved to play. And he played them all—basketball, baseball, tennis, football, swimming, track. His natural athletic ability was good, but not outstanding. He was sturdy, but not particularly tall (just six feet) or particularly strong. That always bothered him because like most boys, he wanted more muscle. But he was quick, with great reflexes and good eye-hand coordination. What helped him most was his joy, his commitment and his enthusiasm. One of his friends marveled, “He never quit. He gave two hundred percent in everything.” He would throw up after little league football workouts; there was a scar on his elbow from an injury that never healed properly because he refused to sit out football until it got better.
He gave everything he had to everything he did. And he tried many things: woodworking, collections of whatever, rock polishing. Each activity, at the time, was “most important.” Sometimes he drove us a little crazy. The rattle of his rock-polishing set went on twenty-four hours a day for weeks, until his sister Debbie threatened to throw it and him out.
His intensity seemed to make him accident prone. He got hit by a bat and needed stitches, pulled the bird bath over on his head, caught his finger in a swing hinge and almost cut it off, and got bit by a big dog in the neighborhood.
Achieving was so important to him it caused problems. As an athlete he tried too hard and seldom relaxed enough to really do his best. Old family movies always showed Sandy with a frown on his face from concentrating. When he won, he was elated; but when he lost, you could not live with him. He was never able to live up to what he thought he should be able to do. We dreaded his losing a basketball game on Saturday morning because it would spoil the rest of the weekend.
Where did Sandy’s extraordinary drive and intensity come from? Was he trying too hard to please me? Many times I remember standing at the edge of the basketball court or football field. After he had made a good shot or tackle, he would look over to see if Jeanie and I were watching. We always let him know how pleased we were.
Yet while he always sought our approval, it was hard for him to receive it. When he was a baby, I would give him a bottle in the middle of the night and try to cuddle him. But he would stiffen and push off. Something kept him a little separate. Many times after a success or a failure, I would hug him and let him know how much I loved him. But it was not easy for him to take. His impossibly high expectations of himself were often irritating. While he always cooperated with his coaches, he found it very difficult to take instructions or suggestions from me or anyone in the family. He was so hard on himself. But why did he have such difficulty receiving love or help?
There was so much of me in Sandy, and so much of Sandy in me. Is that what drew us close and yet kept him a bit apart? Was it too important for him to be me—or to be like me—or to be what he thought I was? Was I so good and perfect in his eyes that he could never let himself just be Sandy?
After all my musings, I still can’t explain him. I am always left with something irreducible, innate, something not to be explained by Jeanie’s or my influence for good or ill. His intensity was inborn, as if he sensed that he had to live life fully because some inner clock knew God had wound him up for just twenty-one years.
He was late speaking his first words. When he finally, ponderously began putting words together, the sentences seemed to go round and round. Debbie, our oldest, was good with words, and Sandy may have been a little intimidated by his talkative family. We even wondered if he needed speech therapy, but found that he had no trouble at all in school.
Still he was precocious about spiritual things. When he was small we had four or five kittens. One day he took them all into the bathroom and baptized each one in the toilet.
A scrupulous sense of fairness and honesty was born in him too. We sometimes thought he had an overly sensitive conscience. Once at an Atlanta Falcon’s game, we saw a man bribe a gate attendant for a place in a restricted parking area. That almost spoiled the whole day for Sandy. Better that than indifference to morals.
Our housekeeper, Sally Wade, also recalls how committed he was to fairness and justice. “I remember one time it rained real bad and my car got stuck in a bog on the side of the road next to your house. I couldn’t get the car out of that bog, no way. Sandy came out to see could he help me. Sandy wasn’t old enough to drive, but he knew how to drive. I said, ‘Sandy, get in there. See can you get it out.’ But he couldn’t either. So he got a man from the filling station to get a wrecker, and the man pulled me out. I asked the man how much it would cost. He said, ‘Eight dollars.’ So I paid and he left. Sandy said, ‘I’m going to make mother give you back your money, ’cause it wasn’t your fault you got stuck.’ I don’t know what he told her, but that Friday when she started to pay me, she called Sandy downstairs and said, ‘See, I’m paying Sally and I’m giving her the money back she paid the man.’ And he said, ‘Well, it’s only right, Mother.’ He went back upstairs and I was tickled to death.”
He could be a Pharisee of the Pharisees when it came to rules. One day when I was in my study, I overheard him and Deb playing one-on-one basketball in the drive. She wanted to play heedless of rules; he insisted otherwise. What bothered me most was that their disagreement made it impossible for them to play at all.
He was full of fun and mischief as well. We still laugh about how his kindergarten teacher called to say that Sandy had climbed a tree and from that lofty perch was going potty on the scene below. He fought with Deb and Kevin, as most children do with their brothers and sisters; they were a headache to travel with; they ruined the locks on all the upstairs rooms, chasing each other, slamming doors and then trying to pick the locks—with scissors!
Many have told Jeanie and me that Sandy was stricter and more conservative than we were. He was never inclined to rebel, as were Deb and Kevin. Even in high school he was always in by eleven by his own volition. If he had gone astray, he probably would have gone the way of the elder brother in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. The younger brother ran away with his share of his father’s fortune and led a wild and profligate life. The older brother was the “good guy.” He never left home, was always dutiful, available and obedient. But the elder brother was just as far from his father as was the younger son, even though he never strayed a foot from the family farm.
All this is not to say that we did not have our differences about what he could and could not do. Nor do I mean that he did not face the temptations that all young people do. He did. I believe that it was the grace of God in his life that took his goodness and made it far more winsome than self-righteous.
His strong desire to be and to do right could and did, at times, make him difficult, starchy and unbending. But as Sandy internalized this uprightness he also learned to feel and show affection and companionship for those of his peers who were far less demanding of themselves. Sometimes righteousness by itself can be cold and forbidding. But it was goodness joined to acceptance and understanding that made Sandy attractive.
Wilma Miller, one of the teachers at Alexander Graham Junior High, later wrote, “I never had an opportunity to teach Sandy, but it was impossible not to be aware of his tremendous influence. . . . He set such a fine example for his peers because of his high moral and intellectual standards, and yet the things his friends have mentioned most often have been his friendliness and genuine ‘caring.’”
Sandy had a great need to understand the gospel of grace, for himself and others. He needed to see that being a Christian is not primarily an achievement, but rather a gift. And that came as he grew.
When he was six years old, he was lying on the red carpet in our den watching one of his Uncle Billy’s crusade services on television. Billy Graham was...
