PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

October 1, 2023

OUT OF THE LINE

                In 1997 Carroll & Graf Publishers reprinted Rex Stout’s first detective novel, Her Forbidden Knight.  Today, Stout is best known for his Nero Wolfe mysteries.  Included in the volume was a short story entitled “Out of the Line.”

In “Out of the Line” Agatha Rossington, a rich widow, is celebrating her birthday. She is taking the occasion to reflect on her life.  “At this moment he (Father Time) was reminding Agatha with brutal frankness that she had passed her thirty-first summer, and that henceforth his sickle would descend with increasing rapidity and more disastrous stroke.  For Agatha, comparatively young as she was, had already reached that melancholy point in live where one’s thoughts lean rather to the past than to the future.” (Her Forbidden Knight, pp. 251-252.)

As Agatha’s maid is helping her with her hair, she tells Jeanne she is unhappy. Then she asks if the maid might have any suggestions of how she might spend her birthday.  After much coaching Jeanne suggests that perhaps she might consider doing something for someone else.  To which Agatha responds, “Jeanne, you are positively a jewel!  Better than that, you are right!  For the first time in my life, I shall try to make someone else happy!” (Knight, p. 256) It would appear that Agatha was about to learn the truth of the words of Jesus found in Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

That evening Agatha had her chauffeur drive herself and her maid to one of the poorer sections of New York.  At the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway they found a line in the cold of eighty or ninety men waiting for a chunk of bread and a cup of coffee.  With the help of a policeman who was there, Agatha began to distribute crisp bills to the men.  She found herself experiencing the joy of giving.

She was about three-quarters of the way down the line when she met a ghost from the past, John Carter.  He had been a love interest from her Romantic Period which had ended in disaster.  Agatha invites John to come to her home when she entertains the prospect of rekindling the old spark.  In part, John tells her, “You want to bring back the past – well, give it up.  It’s the most hopeless and utterly impossible task in the world.  We had our chance; we’ll never have another.  We’re through, you and I.  I don’t love you; I don’t even pity you; for you are not the Atha I loved – you are not Atha at all.  My life is not the only one you’ve ruined.  Don’t think I am deceived by your display of emotion and feeling, and don’t deceive yourself.  It’s all a lie.” (Knight, p. 264).

As I reflect on Stout’s short story, two thoughts come to mind.  First, dwelling on the past can cause one to carry heavy burdens that rob the present of its joys and blessings.  Agatha was able to lift the dark cloud over her life, by turning her attention to the present and how she might be of service to others.

Second, if Agatha wants to be reconciled with John it was not a matter of restoring the past but of experiencing resurrection, a new beginning in the present.  In Isaiah 43:19 the Lord tells Isaiah “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”  What Agatha needs is a new way in the wilderness of her relationship with John.

(Comments may be sent to davidh15503@embarqmail.com.)