Am I “Gettable”?
It’s interesting that no matter how much time has passed since an embarrassing event, my mind can pull it up as though it was filed under “yesterday”. Suddenly, I’m six years old, wearing a little plaid pinafore dress and standing in front of Mrs. Wiegand’s desk. It all started innocently enough – sitting at a miniature desk, doing what we did so much…copying from the blackboard. This particular day, though, something just wasn’t right. I was tired, achy, and it felt hot behind my eyes. I just wanted to lie down. Obviously, I was coming down with something.
So midway through the copying assignment, I took my paper up to the teacher and turned it in. She took one look and said, “This is not done! Why didn’t you finish it?” My response? “I didn’t feel like it.” WRONG thing to say! But it was too late. What I meant was, “I feel sick.” She spun me around, whacked my first grade behind and said, “I don’t care if you feel like it or not. Do it.” I learned right then and there the importance of understanding and making yourself understood.
I guess I came by it honestly. One day back in the 1950’s my grandfather had read in the little country gazette about some people going around with some type of basement scheme…yes, even back then. He was determined nobody was going to scam him. Back in those days country doctors still made house calls, and unbeknownst to grandpa, grandma had called the doctor to come out and see her. When the doctor arrived, grandpa met him at the door thinking it was one of those basement scam artists. So he thought he’d play the guy’s game for a while, and he led him around the back of the house to the cellar, pulled up the creaky old double doors, pointed down the steps and said, “Now, thar she is.” The bewildered doctor stared into the dank, dark void and blinked. Turns out the doctor had asked, “Where’s your patient?”, not “where’s your basement”. Ooops.
Fast forward many years and I’m a court stenographer taking the deposition of a gentleman badly injured while working as a deck hand on a line boat. The interrogator was trying to determine what the young man’s mental capacity was in order to see if he could be retrained for another job, so he asked: “Sir, do you happen to know what your IQ is?”, to which the man replied, “Well, far as I know it’s 20/20.” The attorney grinned and clarified that he was asking the man’s intelligence quotient, not his visual acuity, but I think he got the answer he needed.
I knew a lady a few years back who applied for a job at a local gas quick mart. She got the job and excitedly told us she was to begin work the following day at ten minutes to two. I thought that was an odd time, but what do I know. She reported to work at 1:50 in the afternoon and was told, “We can’t use you. Go on home.” Turns out she was to work the 10:00 to 2:00 shift. Ouch.
Bruce knew someone a few years back who walked into the kitchen where his new bride was putting away the groceries she had just purchased. One by one, she opened each jar, screwed the lid back on and placed it in the refrigerator as her puzzled husband looked on. After she had gone through everything from pickles to pears, he could stand it no more and asked, “What on earth are you doing?”, to which she huffed, “I’m just doing what the label says…”refrigerate after opening”.
Those are some extreme examples, but it’s clear that sometimes there is just a disconnect between what is said and what is understood. We’ve all done it…been on one side or the other of that “duh” moment when something just didn’t register. Understanding is important and so is making yourself understood.
I’d be the first one to say as a writer, I love stories cloaked in flowery, ethereal images that have to have the symbolism analyzed to dissect what the writer is talking about. I appreciate the artistry of it and the talent it took to create it , and in my “spare time”, I’ll get right to work on that. It would be a fun project. But when it comes to the gospel, give it to me straight. No mumbo jumbo.
As gospel singers and songwriters, we are communicators of the best message on earth; and although we cannot control whether or not someone “gets it”, we can do our best to make sure our message is “gettable”. Time is short. This world is a rolling dumpster fire and we have only a little while to make our message known and understood.
I have no time for songs that endlessly talk about the problem. Give me the solution. Tell me there is hope and exactly how to find it in Jesus. Let’s save the gauzy, veiled references for something less urgent. Don’t make me guess whether your song is talking about your love of God, your sweetheart or your horse. Don’t make me have to hunt for the gospel in a gospel song.
This world needs simple, basic truth, told as if speaking to a child. I need it that way. There’s a reason “Jesus Loves Me” is the most popular mission song ever…everybody can get it.
Janice
