© By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min.

http://www.allsaintstorresdale.org

Actor Nicolas Cage will sell his comic book collection this October. Cage’s collection is valued at several million dollars. It includes the comic book in which Superman first appeared (Action Comics No. 1). Cage also has the first comic books that introduced Captain America, Batman, the Green Lantern and other superheroes (The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 8, 2002). Albert Einstein once said: “Sometimes what counts can’t be counted, and what can be counted doesn’t count.” What are the things worth collecting because they really do count?

Collecting questions can really count. In the late 1700s, smallpox was a dreaded disease in England. However, there was one group of people who didn’t get smallpox. They were the dairymaids who caught cowpox, a minor disease that caused a few sores on the hands, but wasn’t disfiguring or fatal. A British physician, Edward Jenner, asked what gave these women immunity to smallpox. In 1796, Jenner took some matter from the infected hand of a dairymaid and inserted it into cuts on an eight-year-old boy. Risking his reputation, six weeks later Jenner put smallpox into the boy’s arm. It had no effect on the boy. Collecting the right questions can really count in life.

Collecting debts can really count, too. I don’t mean financial debts, but rather gathering into our minds a sense of indebtedness to people who have labored for the freedom and the benefits we enjoy. In the 1800s, the American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote the poem “The Village Blacksmith.” He wrote this about the blacksmith: “He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.” Maybe you can put his words down to poetic license, but the blacksmith was deeply in debt to the pioneers who through the centuries discovered iron and the way to use it.” Like the red ink used in bookkeeping, our church doors at All Saints’ Church are red to show our indebtedness to the past.

Besides collecting questions and collecting debts, we certainly need to learn how to collect ourselves. Here the word “collect” is used in a figurative sense to mean “to regain control of.” After the shock of last September 11, all of us have been trying to collect ourselves and our thoughts. In ancient Israel, a collector of proverbs gives us this one: “It is better to win control over yourself than over whole cities” (Proverbs 16:32). A grandmother once gave her grandson this advice: “When you’re lost, take some time simply to collect yourself and get your bearings.” Start collecting the things that really count: questions, debts, and yourself.