Doop Doop’s Prayer

When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself - a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman, a righteous or unrighteous man . . . when in the fullness of tasks, questions, success or ill hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the arms of God then he wakes up with Christ in Gethsemane. That faith, that is the metanoia, and, it is thus that he becomes a man and a Christian.   Dietrich Bonhoffer

                                                           

In the early morning hours of April 11, 1957, an eight-pound, seven-ounce infant was born to a couple who had waited thirteen years between children.  The infant was a boy, the last male child of a lineage of factory workers who chose to inhabit Forsyth County, North Carolina in the early nineteenth century.  They gave him a name befitting of such significance.  My parents named me Arvil Lee Collins.

Truthfully, how many of you have ever met anyone named Arvil?  It is an unusual name, and, apart from those who live in Yadkin County, North Carolina, few have ever heard of it.  The reason for my name is quite logical.  You see, my father is Harry Lee Collins Jr., and my mother’s father was Henry Arvil Norman.   With the name Arvil Lee, my parents made all significant male members of my family proud.  Only when my thirteen-year-old sister protested did my parents consider the impact of a boy named Arvil in urban America. My sister insisted I not be called “Arvil” in public.  Normally, this dilemma would be resolved by calling me “Lee”.  However, there was a boy who lived down the street named Lee, who my sister disliked as much as she disliked the name Arvil.  She offered a compromise.  My father had nicknamed her “Buddy”, and she would give up this name for my benefit.

Names are very important.  It was with great care that we named our son.  David Anderson Collins was born on January 6, 1991.   His name accomplished two important tasks.  First, it is a common and biblically impressive name and second, David Anderson Collins is the name of my great-grandfather who died in 1905.  This David lost his father when he was five years old.  He went to work in a cotton mill when he was nine, and worked there every day for the next 39 years.  He died leaving a wife and ten children, the second youngest of whom was my grandfather, Harry Lee Collins Sr., a man I affectionately knew as “Doop Doop”.

My memories of Doop Doop are not very good.  He suffered from emphysema and a love and unflinching commitment to the pleasures of cigarette smoking, a particular deadly combination of sickness and vice. Doop Doop was quite poor.  He and my grandmother never owned a home. For most of his life, he worked as an itinerant baker and struggled to keep food on his family’s table.   For most of my life, he was retired.  He and “Mom”(my grandmother) lived in a four-room house next to my aunt, saved from abject poverty by the love of their children and the social security checks each received monthly.  His sickness sapped his strength.   Years of poverty and hard work had taken away his spirit.  I never saw him drive a car; I never knew him to own one.  I never saw him attend church, read a book, engage in laughter or storytelling.  He had no interests except for his cigarettes, his family, and what was on television. 

My memories of my mother’s father are quite different.  My Granddaddy Arvil was my first hero.  He was a tall and handsome man, who had worked his way from childhood poverty into some prominence in rural Yadkin County.  When I was born, he was the Chairman of the County Commission and had already prospered as barber, farmer, horse trader and businessman.  He ran a barbershop in a country store, which was the center of activity in his part of the county.  People lined up weekly for haircuts and sweet smelling tonic.  There, they talked politics, tobacco prices and learned of the good or bad fortune of their neighbors.

Granddaddy Arvil traded cars every year, and raised puppy dogs.  He was a diviner, a person who could locate underground water with a peach tree limb.  He drank a Dr. Pepper soda every afternoon. No one but Granddaddy Arvil could tell whether a watermelon was ripe to eat, or whether honey was really made from a sourwood tree.  He was also a humble man, who did not think his accomplishments and popularity to be very important.  He sorely regretted that he lacked the educational opportunities I enjoyed.  He instilled in me the importance of being successful in school by paying me a dollar for every “A” and “B” I earned in school.  As a dedicated member of the New Home Methodist Church, he had a foot long array of Sunday school medals indicating his perfect attendance for decades and a well-worn, leather-bound King James Bible. If someone he knew was in the hospital, he always visited with barber tools at hand, attending to their needs without ever taking any compensation.  When he died, people stood for hours at the funeral home, many accounting to my mother various acts of kindness and generosity shown them by my grandfather.  At his funeral, the minister described him as a “Christian gentleman in every sense of the word”.  In my office hangs a horseshoe, which hung in his barbershop, and on my desk is his King James Bible.  How I longed to be like Granddaddy Arvil!

It was a rainy evening in the summer of 1970.  The telephone rang. My father answered, quickly hung up, and with a look of fear ordered us all to the car.  Doop Doop had called in a panic. Something was wrong with Mom and “come quick” was all he had said.  When we arrived, we found Mom lying motionless on the kitchen floor.  Her skin was a bluish gray, and she was not breathing.  My dad began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, making her chest heave with a sickening, gurgling sound.  He told me to go out and make sure the ambulance found the house.  I took a flashlight, and stood in the rain, said a prayer for Mom, and waited for what seemed like an hour for the red flashing lights of the ambulance. 

Mom left in the ambulance.  Doop Doop was too sick to ride along. My parents and my Aunt drove to the hospital leaving me with Doop Doop, my sister, brother-in-law and uncle.  Time stood still while we waited for the telephone to ring.  Doop Doop sat in his chair, stroking his dog in his lap, and softly cried.  With big tears streaming down his cheek, he exclaimed over and over again, “She’s all I got in this world, and I don’t know what I would do if they can’t make her well . . . but not my will but God’s be done.”  How confused was I with this comment.  “What kind of prayer is that?” I thought.   My silent prayer was very different: “I love my grandmother and she is the only one I have left. Momma Arvil died when I was seven and it isn’t right for a boy not to have a grandmother.  I want my will to be done!  I want her to live!  I’ve got faith in you God and if you are anything like the God I learned about in Sunday school you will make her well!”

Gethsemane is a garden outside Jerusalem.*  In Jesus’ day it was one of very few places where one could find solitude outside of a building.  It was built on a hill overlooking the city.   It is where Jesus went to pray the night before His arrest.  It was the place where Jesus confronted the inevitable conflict of His humanity with His divinity. He had emotions like you and me.  He loved, and wept, and was at times angered. He enjoyed the company of friends, and the admiration of people.  He was a skilled man of trade, and was a shrewd teacher of men.  He could make complicated matters of theology understood by reference to an everyday story.  He was brave.  He was compassionate.  He was humble. He was an inspiring leader of men. The foolishness of his trusted friends often frustrated him.  Most of all, He did not wish to die.  He was but thirty-three years of age.  He had no children.  His whole life lay before him.  Why did he have to give it up?  Why did he have to be crucified like a common thief?  So, with three trusted friends, he went to dark Gethsemane to pray.  “If it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. If I must drink of this cup, I shall, it is not what I wish to do, but thy will, not mine be done” is his recorded prayer.

Have you ever knelt in the garden of Gethsemane?  If so, what was your prayer?  Have you ever struggled over the loss of a loved one?  Have the prospects of a debilitating illness or death confronted you?  Have you ever faced unemployment or financial catastrophe?  Have you been torn apart by the disintegration of a family or personal relationship?  Has God ever ripped something precious to you from your tightly clenched fist?  Have you ever been faced with a situation that you could not handle, when events were beyond your control, and your emotions were tearing your heart right out of your chest?  What was your prayer?  Did you seek God’s will, or did you will God to do your bidding?  Did you seek to conform your actions to God’s will or did you try to fashion God’s actions to accomplish your purpose? 

Granddaddy Arvil may be my hero, but I learned far more from Doop Doop’s prayer.   I am not sure when Doop Doop learned this prayer.  Nevertheless, I am sure it did not come to him from some inspiring sermon, or some revelation from a study of scripture.  It is a prayer of one who has struggled through life, and has learned the importance of a power greater than his own.  He might have learned it as a child who lamented over being part of a fatherless family, or as a young teenager forced to work to help put food on the table.  Perhaps, he learned it as a young man, struggling through the Depression with three hungry children and no job or as a father, who watched his only son go off to war, and wondered if he would return. Maybe it was a prayer of an old man, whose life was diminished by sickness and poverty.  I don’t know which time Doop Doop first knelt in the garden of Gethsemane, but I am convinced that he understood the importance of submission to God’s will rather than his own. 

God understands perfectly what we want, need, and desire of life. He knows that we love our families, our health, our security and our personal relationships with others.  He even considers such important.  What He does not consider is that such matters should be our first priority.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”  This is how He has instructed us to live our lives.  Think about how we often pray: “God give me strength that I might achieve great things!”; “God give me wealth that I might live life abundantly!”; “God give me health that I might live long and enjoy life to the fullest!”; “God give me power that I might have the praise of others”; “God make someone love me, or give me a job, or make me happy!”  As we so pray, are we not asking our will, rather than God’s be done?

Seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness is often neither easy nor pleasant  in response to everyday situations.   Nevertheless, as His servants, we are accountable, and we are required to conform our behavior to His standards.   Conformity to God’s requirements is learned behavior, often a most difficult and painful process.  It requires a commitment, and a desire to succeed.   It never happens until we initiate the process by saying a simple prayer – “God change me!” The Greeks describe it as metanioa - a change of mind.  It is the decision to subordinate our desires to His will.   It happens when we permit God to be our Master, and each of us His servant.  Once we sincerely take this step, a metamorphosis - a change of our very nature - will begin. Our outward appearance will not change.  Our bad habits, our negative attitudes, or even our sinful behavior, will not immediately disappear.  The same friends, the same job, the same frustrations, the same problems, the same successes, and the same failures will confront us still.  Nevertheless, a change will take place within us - it is even happening as you read this.  God is at work remodeling you inside out.  At times, the change will be imperceptible while, at other times, the change will be dramatic. Most assuredly, it will not happen at once.  It may not even be completed in this life!  Rest assured, God will change you, sometimes in spite of you, and often in ways you never will understand or even think possible. This change will at times be exhilarating and uplifting.  At other times, it may be painful and confusing.   For growing up Christian may require kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane.   

 When it happens to you, be careful how you pray.

*

When considering the symbolic meaning of the gethsemene, it is important to understand both the economic and religious importance of the olive and its oil in Biblical times. Much of Israel was, and still is today, olive-producing. The olive was much more than food: Its oil was burned in lamps and served as a preserving agent and a lubricant for skin care. It had great value in daily life.

The process used to extract olive oil was a laborious one. Whole olives were put into a circular stone basin in which a millstone sat (see photo). A donkey or other animal was then harnessed to the millstone and walked in a circle, rolling the stone over the olives and cracking them.

The cracked olives were scooped up into burlap bags, which were then stacked beneath a large stone column--a gethsemane. The enormous weight forced the precious oil to drip from the fruit into a groove and on into a pit at the base of the gethsemane, from which it was collected.

The gethsemane and mill were large and expensive tools, and private citizens could rarely afford to own them. Whoever controlled the equipment, the wealthy elite or government officials, had economic power over the local population. People had to pay steep fees in order to process their olives. The gethsemane and mill were a burden born by many, because olives were an economic mainstay of society.

Deeper Meaning. The olive tree and its oil had even greater cultural importance as religious elements. The verb mashach-- from the same root word for messiah in Hebrew--means "to be annointed with olive oil." Priests, kings and prophets were annointed with olive oil, indicating that they were gifted and called by God. So it was understood that the anticipated Messiah would be specially annointed with olive oil.

The tree also represented the purpose of the promised Messiah--to renew Israel. When an olive tree grows old, it is cut down because there's too much trunk for the leaves to nourish. The following year, a new shoot comes out of the old tree, eventually producing new fruit and lots of healthy branches.

In Isaiah 5, God says to the unbelieving nation of Israel (paraphrased), "You didn't produce any fruit. But I was patient. I dug around you. I fertilized you. I kept you growing. And after a while, I looked. There was still no fruit, so I cut you down." And then He says in chapter 11, "Behold, a new shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse and will become a new tree with new fruit."

The Jews believed that the new shoot, which was going to renew, restore and revitalize the nation of Israel, was the Messiah. The Messiah is the shoot or branch out of Jesse. If Jesus is the branch or stem, then we, as Gentiles, have been grafted in, according to the apostle Paul. That means our roots are the Jewish people. That's our stump. We can't exist and bear fruit without the Jewish roots. Second, it means Jesus is where we get life and energy.

But the key is the olives we produce. Paul says in Romans 11:21 (paraphrased), "If God cut down the natural tree, what do you think He would do to you who have been grafted in if you don't bear fruit?" Jesus came to be the new shoot for what reason? So we would have life to bear fruit.

Greatly Pressed. The night before His Crucifixion, Jesus went to the garden of the olive press--the Garden of Gethsemane. He got down on His knees and began to experience the weight of what was going to be laid on Him. That weight was so incredibly heavy that it squeezed out of Him His own blood. He was heavily pressed. This Jesus, who taught and preached and performed miracles and was raised from the dead, went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Laid on Him was the sin of the entire world.

Ray Vander Laan