Friday, March 20, 2026
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Rorschach
Many are the troubles of the just man,
but out of them all the LORD delivers him.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
He watches over all his bones;
not one of them shall be broken.
Tomorrow Margaret and I will drive to Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois. Our grandson Jack turned seventeen last month, and this month he’s a member of Pleasant Plains High School’s champion scholastic bowl team. The team has won most of its matches this year, including their Illinois regional and sectional, and now in Normal at the state championship they will be facing Chicago schools that often destroy their opponents.
They won’t destroy Plains.
So just as I love watching close basketball games, I think I’ll love watching Jack. Although in the classrooms where the matches are held, the congregation of family and friends are expected to stay quiet. No screaming, chanting, cheering, and certainly no mouthing answers that we older folks know ourselves. The teams might see and read our lips!
The questions can be complex math or science questions, references to obscure books or characters in literature, or questions about movies and TV. Culture has moved right along … from silents to sound to technicolor to synthesizers and CGI. How many details can I cram into my brain? My friend said his son’s team lost when no one could identify a film where someone said, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Jack and family watch Jeopardy most nights and play right along. On trips they read questions aloud from books of jeopardic questions, and just as in the matches, their books cover facet after facet of life, past, now and ever after.
Scholastic bowl matches are fun for Jack and his friends. Sort of. Wincing after a mistake, especially when you know the answer but forget it for just a second, or when you push the buzzer too soon and answer a question that wasn’t exactly asked. We the congregation wince along with you.
It’s easy to get cocky. At least it was for me at Lincoln Community High School in the mid 1960s. Being “smart” felt pretty good, and it adequately took the place of being sexy or handsome or a star quarterback. High school hallways can be gauntlets. So we hoped for and sometimes found friends who could circle up and protect each other from the rest of the world. Covered wagons on the Oregon Trail didn’t have anything on us. The scholastic bowl team circled up. We didn’t have a secret handshake, but we knew we were cool.
So at our own championship tournament, when I heard a question about an inkblot test, I buzzed in. “What is … the Rorschach test, developed by a Swiss psychiatrist to investigate subconscious thought patterns.”
Pause. The moderator looked at me. “I can’t accept that.” Then the other team had a chance to answer after the entire question was read: “What field of study would use this test?”
PSYCHOLOGY. What is … PSYCHOLOGY.
Well, duh. I made it too complicated, and the other team won the match. Second place kind of sucked.
I didn’t feel so smart or cocky then. Adolescence is more of a gauntlet even than our high school hallway, and I was miserable for awhile, ashamed and angry. But in the middle of our circle I found a campfire and I sat. Sherry and Dusty and Terry and Gary came and sat with me. They didn’t say a word. We looked into the fire together. Their eyes were not full of scorn. They were full of love.
There, but for the grace of God, go I. The chaplain at Graham Correctional Center spoke with Kogudus team members before our retreat. He talked about the inmates who would be with us for the weekend. How they had made one mistake too many. How easily we could be in their place.
That’s what happened around the fire after our loss … after my loss. Unlike Job’s friends, my teammates kept quiet. No advice. For years after then, at our high school reunions, we smiled at each other and remembered. And as far as I know, none of us later became inmates.
The LORD redeems the lives of his servants;
no one incurs guilt who takes refuge in him.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
 (Wisdom 2, Psalm 34, Matthew 4, John 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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