Ed, my neighbour next door, hasn't much patience for more than a pinch of pomp and protocol. When you stand for our national anthem at the beginning of a hockey game and then sit down when it is done - that is more than enough ceremony for Ed.
"How was your daughter's call to the bar?" Ed asked. He was referring to our recent trip to Ottawa to attend our daughter's ceremony to become a lawyer.
"It was an event full of pomp and protocol. It took place before a large number of members of the Law Society of Upper Canada. All the graduates looked splendid in black robes with split white collars. The whole affair was quite interesting," I told Ed.
"I bet you didn't get away without some long dull graduation speech by an eastern lawyer who didn't have a lick of common sense," Ed observed.
"Actually, the person presiding over the ceremony was a woman lawyer from Ontario, but she grew up in Saskatchewan on a farm three miles from her closest neighbour and thirteen miles from any town. Yet, she capitalized on her dream of becoming a lawyer. Her speech to the graduates was short, wise, and inspiring. It was as fine as a good sermon," I related to Ed. He just scoffed in response.
Ed has a dim view of lawyers. In his mind, they are just one degree better than clergy. A lawyer may do a person some good once in a while, but clergy are a recurring nuisance - like mosquitoes causing people to scratch and itch. It doesn't seem that Ed's attitude will change anytime soon. Our attitudes tend to change slowly or often not at all. As of right now, Ed's mind is set on the limited value of lawyers and the uselessness of clergy.
Others may talk to us and try to influence us to change our attitude, but often it seems to fail to make any difference. In the Bible, there is a well-known story of a son who demanded his share of his inheritance from his father and, once he had it, took off to a far country to spend it. There, the son spent his inheritance and found himself alone, broke, and hungry. His attitude changed from wanting to get away from his father to one of wanting to return to his father. He wanted to return home to work as his father's hired man.
When the son returned home, his father welcomed him back not as a hired man, but as his son. To welcome his boy back as a son, the father needed to follow the pomp and protocol of the day. He dressed his son in a fine robe, put a ring on his finger, and threw a feast so the whole neighbourhood would realize he had his son back.
When the father's eldest son came in from the field to find a feast in progress, his attitude was one of anger and resentment. He would not go into the feast and welcome his brother home. His father came out and talked to him, but as the story ends the eldest son remains outside, resentful and unwilling to see his brother as anything but useless. Did his attitude ever change towards his brother? God alone knows. God also knows if we are stuck in a resentful, angry attitude toward someone. Our resentful and judgmental attitudes are not always obvious to ourselves but they are never hidden from God's sight.
