HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW

Sorry for the bad pun (here/hair today), but one recent night my kitchen floor was covered in grandboy hair. He'd not had a trim in months, and that night when he was visiting, I dared to say, “Would you like to earn $2 and have a haircut tonight?” Money talks to little boys with an addiction to those tiny little colored notched plastic building blocks whose name starts with “L.”  He, his dad, and a brother had just come from an "L-toy" store. 

Within minutes of coming inside my home, his brother was already assembling the newest L-block toy. But Grandboy #3 hadn't bought one. He might have spent his allowance at another tempting place (the candy aisle at a local quick-mart?). I didn't ask. But his hair was getting hippie-style. His dad usually is his “barber” in the family bathroom (where the “results” are easily swept up), but Grandboy #3 had escaped the scissors and buzzer way too long. Money talked (Grandma's money!) and soon he was on the kitchen stool, orange plastic cape on his shoulders, getting a major trim by an electric-clipper-holding dad, who's performed this rite often. (And I asked myself, is this how it works? Does the person who cuts my hair pay me for the privilege of making me look human again? No, I think it's the other way around!)

He does get an allowance for chores around the house. I can't remember, but he might be “tasked” with taking the clean knives/folks/spoons out of the dishwasher and divvying them into the sectioned “utensil drawer.” Maybe he takes a turn scooping the gross little “sausages” (to put it nicely) out of the cat's litter box. Whatever it is, it's age appropriate. And it provides him with a tiny door into the big-world lesson of managing money.

So, back to the haircut and its results all over that end of the kitchen. If this had been a barn, it might have passed for wall-to-wall hay, in and out the animal stalls. But no, it was a little boy's hair, and he was $2 happier for cooperating.

I wonder if this story might represent the times when someone is reluctant to get rid of something they really don't need, but are negligent about abandoning. Instead of hair, maybe it's cutting away a bad attitude toward someone. Or failure to step out in faith to a big life change instead of stagnating with negative choices. They get so used to the overgrown, messy “present-self" that they can't envision that changing.

The apostle James (coincidentally the same name as my “hairy” grandson) considered that dynamic when he wrote, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed” (James 5:16 KJV). I think we often focus on the “confess” and “pray” parts of that verse—and we should—but we overlook the “another” (or “one another” as in other translations). Left to ourselves, we get blind or stubborn to our neediness, resisting change. My grandson needed the incentive of $ to make an “appearance” decision, but in spiritual matters, a payoff is not the solution. The key words in this verse are “confess,” “one another,” “pray,” and “healed.” Necessary spiritual change happens best with admission of need, support of community, and earnest desire to adopt changes toward spiritual wholeness.

Disclaimer: there is no barber's striped pole outside my front door. No cutesy signs that say, “Hair today, gone tomorrow.” I'm happy to serve my family's “junior members” in this way. And when they run into the bathroom to see their “new look,” I think of how I need to regularly check my image in God's mirror—wanting to honor Him in the way that people see Him through me.

Hairy Decisions

I am a “kitchen barber” who is often called for buzz-duty as the world is waking up. That way my only client (hubby) can take his morning shower right after I run the clipper over his head to restore it to the quarter-inch hair-length he prefers. Forget the hype of shampoo ads. You don’t need much for stubble maintenance. Our utilitarian approach to one’s crowning glory is why one of the long-time family jokes about vanity concerns hair. About fifteen years ago, a young woman who visited us got into a conversation (somehow) about hair products. As she told how she uses only the very best, she flipped her long tresses and said, “My hair is important to me.” We nodded politely. She hadn’t seen what’s on our tub ledge: cheap stuff, usually bought on sale with a coupon.

Apparently hair was important to the apostle Paul, too, as he prepared to leave Achaia (Greece) for Jerusalem on his second missionary journey. Acts 18:18 says he was in Corinth’s eastern port city, Cenchrea, when he had his hair cut “because of a vow he had taken.” Scholars say this was a “Nazirite vow,” detailed in Numbers 6 for those who sought to focus in a special way on God’s calling. The Bible’s most infamous “Nazirite” was Samson, who didn’t live up to all the vow’s requirements, which included (besides letting one’s hair grow out) avoiding wine and contact with dead bodies. Oh yes, focusing on purity, which went downhill when Delilah came into view. Though it wasn’t required of Christians, Paul apparently reached back into his Jewish heritage for an outward reminder of his need of God’s empowerment in mission work in Macedonia and Corinth. Now, his second mission trip nearing a conclusion, he was ready to end the vow, recognizing that God had indeed heard his prayers for help.

Paul didn’t follow all the rules for the Nazirite vow, which included bringing a sacrifice to the “tent of meeting” (by then the temple in Jerusalem) and having his hair cut on the spot to toss on the altar with the slain animal. He wouldn’t reach Jerusalem for weeks, after some side trips to what’s now the country of Turkey. Rather than getting all hung up on the rules of an Old Testament act of consecration, here’s the part of the whole “hairy” experience worth considering. When faced with a calling bigger than we could ever think of doing on our own, are we ready to seek the Lord with honest earnestness, admitting our dependence on Him? Maybe this was behind Paul’s statement in a letter to one of the churches he left behind in Achaia (Greece). By now a prisoner in Rome, he wrote the church at Philippi, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6, emphasis added).

And here’s another idea for applying the de-hairing principle. Do we care more about how we look on the outside than what’s inside, at soul level? Are we willing to God trim, shave, or even uproot the shaggy sins hiding there? Soul-care should be very important to us.