by Kevin Burton
There is a recliner in my corner, beaten, battered and blue.
On the night I received the keys to the Mancave I was told by the proprietor, “You can get rid of that.” But I kept the chair because it was beaten, battered and blue.
You see my late father had a recliner in his bedroom, in his corner. It was sort of a command center for him. His chair was also beaten, battered and blue, ever more so.
So the one reminds me of the other and I ponder them both in my mornings, in my corner.
My corner is a place of prayer, coffee, morning devotions, visiting cats, memory verses and memories.
In my corner are two pictures, one of my mother, one of my father. The latter is not actually a picture, but an artist’s rendering made from a picture that somebody did for my sister. She gave me a copy of it.
The symbolism is perfect – a drawing not a picture – because my father never wanted anybody to see the real him.
That artist’s rendering hangs over my left shoulder as I sit in my corner. Over my right shoulder hangs a picture of my mother in her nurse’s uniform. She’s impossibly young, somewhere in her 20s.
The eyes are honest, earnest and caring. The eyes have not yet seen the major troubles of life that would come soon enough, the handicapped children, the arguments, the divorce.
In the picture mom seems steady and steadying.
Yesterday on Page 7 we ran a post about various sports terms that have been absorbed into the larger national lexicon. Today in a different context we sort of continue that with a term they left out, “to be in someone’s corner.”
This is a term from boxing. To be in someone’s corner is to provide physical and emotional support, encouragement, instruction, advice.
The message of the Bible is that God is in my corner. But you’ll have to re-arrange things a bit to get the real meaning there, to get to the truth of it.
In the boxing sense, the corner men deliver messages along the lines of “You’re the best champ, go out there and show them what you’ve got, stick and move. You can do this. You’re the greatest!”
The boxer emerges from his corner with the power in his fists and the wits he has earned from hard experience. For three minutes he will fight, alone, absorbing the blows, trying to survive.
If I rise from my chair, in my mornings, in my corner, in my own strength like a boxer, I’m sunk before the chair stops groaning. For there is no power in my corner outside of the storehouses of God. That power does not reside in my flesh and never will. And God doesn’t tell me things like “you’re the best, show them what you’ve got.”
God tells me “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9) and “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jer. 33:3) and ’ “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4).
These are just a few of my marching orders, contained in the Holy Bible. This is the way life was meant to work. The closer I stick to it, the better off I will be. I may rise from my corner on unsteady legs, but I do not fight alone.
God is in my corner and He sees me there. He knows full well that I am beaten, battered and blue, just like my chair, just like my father’s chair.
In truth, this is God’s corner. This is my Father’s world. I am blessed beyond measure to be allowed a little corner of it.
Page 7 