Bryan is well-known for his weekly column, "Faithworks", with "The Sunday Herald Sun", Melbourne, Australia, published by The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT). His select columns from previous weeks are republished in this space with his permission.- Editor

---

"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without" – Confucius

WAL Richards was a solitary and scruffy character who rode around the streets of the little Victorian town of Maryborough on his old blue and white Malvern Star bike for 60 years.

Wal was dishevelled, awkward and out of proportion. His face was misshapen and spooked some of the town's kids. He could not read or write and had a speech impediment. Most people ignored him, until after he died.

Kim Thoday, pastor at an Adelaide Church of Christ, recently wrote about the beautiful miracle of Wal.

"Wal went to over 2000 of the townspeople's weddings," wrote Pastor Thoday. "He never got an invite but there he'd be with his box brownie camera at the ready.

People pointed and took offence at his intrusion in the early days. But a few wits said it didn't really matter. After all, what harm could it do? The pictures wouldn't turn out anyway. Wal could hardly dress himself, let alone operate a camera and develop the pictures.

On a few occasions Wal would go to a church in another town if it involved a Maryborough person or couple being married there. A few times he rode to a town 40 miles away. Or sometimes a Maryborough wedding was conducted in Melbourne and his phantom-like figure would be up on the train platform at 6am in the misty morning light.

For the most part Wal just merged with the other unintelligible religious objects. It's a pity because, like Wal, they hid something important."

A few months after Wal died, someone thought to clean out his old hut. They found hundreds of old shoeboxes, each full of black and white photographs -- a photographic history of Maryborough's weddings going back decades.

The photos captured, as Pastor Thoday wrote, "furtive brides, teary mothers, harried fathers-in-law, drunken uncles, giggling bridesmaids, nervous grooms, dutiful fathers" -- mostly not posed.

The town set up an exhibition of Wal's photos, and it became a tourist attraction for a while. But there was not one photo of Wal, the rough diamond who had been mistaken for a worthless pebble.

Pastor Thoday sensed an important life lesson in the story of Wal.

"It's important to be noticed, remembered; in fact it's essential to being human," he wrote.
"But perhaps the most important thing we can do in life is to truly see others. Maybe that's what Jesus meant when he said we must die to ourselves.

"Perhaps God is a bit like Wal, noticing us, accepting us, loving us, just as we are; God riding along on an old dragster, determined, despite our lack of sight, to take our picture, to remember us, to see us for what we are and what we can be."

God often seems to work with imperfect instruments.

Consider, for example, this biblical cast list: Noah was a drunk, Abraham was too old, Moses had a stutter, Gideon was afraid, Sampson was a womaniser, David had an affair and was a murderer, Isaiah preached naked, Jonah ran from God, Elijah was suicidal, John the Baptist ate bugs, Peter denied Christ, the disciples fell asleep while praying and Paul was a terrorist. In the end, they changed by living outside the human expectations and inside the grace of God.

THEY were not imprisoned by their shortcomings, but dramatically transformed by faith. They knew they were most empowered when least encumbered.

Winston Churchill said the human story did not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four.

"Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye."

We only live once on this planet, but if we work it right, once is enough.

We just have to realise that God often chooses the foolish things of the world to confuse the seemingly wise. The bottom line is that people are never perfect, but God's love is.

If God really knows the numbers of the hairs of our head, then nothing can dim the light that shines within us, even if others can't see it. Even if we sometimes can't see it ourselves.

***

Close Window