Make Straight In The Backyard …

Philip Wylie played a unique conversational gambit as an icebreaker on meeting strangers.

Wylie was the author of When Worlds Collide, Opus 21, and Generation Of Vipers. His writings inspired the comic book characters of Spiderman and Flash Gordon.

In 1930 Wylie wrote the book Gladiator, which became the basis of the comic book hero Superman.

On meeting a stranger at a cocktail party, Wylie would ask, “If God walked in through that door right now, what one question would you ask Him”?

Inevitably the stranger would conclude that if God walked in the door right now, there would be no question. All questions would be answered by His presence.

Although Philip Wylie’s books were favorite reading among sophomores when I was in college, I had not thought of him for years until yesterday while I leveled flagstones in our backyard.

Yes, I painted the chimney. Yes, I tarred behind the woodwork. Yes, I caulked the walls and painted them. Yes, I pressure washed the deck. Yes, I repaired the hole in the side of the pool.

Our home is improved.

Darn sure better be after all the work I’ve put into renovating the place since January. From top to bottom everything about our home has improved except my disposition.

So now I’ve worked down to leveling a flagstone walkway in the backyard.

Don’t want anybody to trip.

This leveling involved chopping tree roots, which over the years have pushed the stones aside, or adding sand in places where over the years rain washed out the underpinnings of the stones.

As I worked, I thought about Philip Wylie’s icebreaker and about the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill shall be made low:
And the crooked shall be made straight,
And the rough places plain:
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed…

The message is, Get ready. Prepare to meet thy God. He’s about to walk in through that door.

Jesus once said, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me”.

Any questions?

My daughter Eve drove over from work to spend the afternoon talking with me. Something at her job upset her and she took the afternoon off for a mental health break.

As she sat telling me about what happened at work and watching me level stones, I asked her opinion about one troublesome stone that I’d worked with for over an hour.

She said, “Well, Daddy, it’s level on one end”.