The Riddle of the Sphynx (01/07/2010)

Warren Sentinel Weekly Pulpit

This past week my mother-in-law was sitting at our kitchen table doing a crossword puzzle. For whatever reason, she thought I might be able to help her. She was looking for a three word answer that began with the letter “m.” The clue was something like, “The answer to the riddle of the sphynx.”

I'm really bad at crossword puzzles. And I know little or nothing about sphynxes (or is it sphynxae or sphynxum). Whatever the case, it would be a great word in a game of Scrabble. I had absolutely no idea what the answer was.

My wife, who was sitting nearby, didn't miss a beat and said, “The answer is man.” She didn't know how she knew the answer, she just did. I know I have a brilliant wife, but I still had to google this to be sure for myself.

According to Google, a mythological Greek sphynx (maybe I should have learned this in college or high school or by watching jeopardy) would ask each passerby, “Which creature in the morning goes on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening upon three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?”

If the passerby didn't answer correctly by saying, “a man” (for some reason “a woman” wasn't an acceptable answer), she would strangle and devour the unclever person. Good thing it was my mother-in-law and not a sphynx who had asked me for help with her crossword puzzle!

You see, as children we crawl on all fours; as we grow older we walk on two feet; and as we age we may need the help of a cane and eventually a walker.

All this got me to thinking about the verse in first Corinthians 13 which read, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”

The last decade was a difficult one for many of us and certainly for us as a nation. So much to learn. So many new challenges. So many mistakes. In many ways it felt like the toddler and childhood years of the new millennium. But since the new millennium is still so young, I wonder if the coming decade will be known as the “tween and teen” decade. And given that I'm the father of both a tween and a teen I wonder what this will look like!

My prayer is that as individuals, as a community, and as nation we will have learned from the challenges, and especially the mistakes, of the past decade and continue to mature in the coming years. Tween and teen years can be among the most challenging, but some of my favorite memories and certainly many of my greatest dreams come from those years.

May God bless you and keep you in 2010 and throughout the coming decade, whatever we call it!