Devotional by Carter Wheelock
Edward Fitzgerald took the ancient verses of an old Persian poet and remade them into a classic of English literature, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It's an agnostic poem, but I love it because of its deep humanity. I read it as the honest expression of a man's need of a saving God. One of the verses speaks mournfully of the fact that once we have written our life-script, nothing can change it: The moving finger writes, and nothing will lure it back to cancel half a a line.
I don't think that's quite true. This reminds me of a story by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Other Death." There was an old soldier in Argentina named Pedro Damian. He was nineteen when he lost his courage at the Battle of Masoller in 1904, and he was known for the rest of his long life as a coward. On his deathbed he prayed for a miracle -- that God would go back and change history, letting him die as a hero in that battle. People remembered the old coward of Masoller very well and spoke of him with disgust. As time went by, they began to forget the details of his life; then they began to forget exactly when and how he died; and finally they seemed to remember that he was killed -- yes, it was at the great Battle of Masoller. God did not change history, but he changed the memory of it.
There are three kinds of history -- what happened, what we think happened, and what we wish had happened. When I was a boy, one of my friends was a lovely girl named Louella Burnell. Her father sold insurance, and like so many fathers during the Depression, he was barely able to support his family. One afternoon when I passed by the door of my grandmother's living room, I saw Mr. Burnell sitting there, rubbing his bald head in a kind of bewildered way, and he was saying, "But I was counting on your taking the insurance -- you signed the papers, and I have already sent them to the company." My grandmother said, "I'm sorry, but I've changed my mind. I can't afford it, and the matter is closed." Mr. Burnell left the house dejected, and that night -- how well I remember it! -- he shot himself.
My grandmother realized afterward that her decision had been a straw that broke the camel's back. She had done nothing wrong, but she felt guilty and no doubt confessed it to God. I know for certain that if she could have done it all over again, she would have taken the insurance, whatever the cost. She no doubt prayed that the moving finger would go back and erase what it had written. And now I see more clearly how it is with God when he reads the scores at the end of our game on earth. He combines the histories into one. When he combines what happened with what we wish had happened, or with what we would gladly go back and do differently, something is changed.
When I think of Mr. Burnell sitting in that chair rubbing his bald head, and of how my grandmother felt after his suicide, it comforts me to know from Christ himself that prayers of remorse and faith are stored in heaven alongside the facts, and they change things. In the mind of God, and in the minds of those who believe in him, what happened never happened. Forgiving is forgetting, and God has been turning off his memory since he created man. I'm one of those who remember very clearly that Pedro Damian died a hero in 1904, at the Battle of Masoller.