Some four or five years ago, the Sunday “Parade” magazine ran a cover article on the actress Sandra Bullock in which they quoted her with a wonderful line. “What makes you different,” she said in huge letters on the front cover, “makes you beautiful.” I thought it was a maxim for the ages and eagerly devoured the article, only to discover that the writer included the line in the final paragraph of the story and it was never elaborated on. I was disappointed, because it’s one of those lines which, if original with Sandra, surely carries a history.

A couple of times every year, I find myself talking with teenagers about their self-esteem. No segment of our society struggles more with issues of personal acceptance than American teenagers, particularly in their early teen years, and most especially, the girls. Somewhere in the presentation I never fail to drop in that line, assuring them that they should not try to look like everyone else, that “what makes you different makes you beautiful.”

Now comes a movie which uses that line in its advertisements. My wife and I took our eleven-year-old granddaughters Abby and Erin to see “Penelope” Saturday afternoon. Margaret said the girls chose the movie; I was drawn to it by the desire to see what the movie did with this truism which had imbedded itself in my mind ever since Sandra Bullock coined it. Assuming she did.

“Penelope” is the story of a girl born with a pig’s snout and ears, the result, we’re told, of a curse on the family by a witch from a couple of centuries back. Only when the child thus cursed is successfully wed to a blue-blood “for better or for worse, til death do they part,” will the curse be lifted. When the child is born, the parents are mortified and hide her inside their mansion until she is of marriageable age. They are revolted by her appearance and so is every suitor whom they parade by her as a possible mate. We the viewers never quite see what all the excitement is about. She has a wide turned-up nose, but is not the monster they all make her out to be.

Eventually, the curse disappears–not as a result of a wedding, but simply when Penelope quits hiding and says, “I like myself the way I am”–and she becomes “normal,” whatever that means. In this case, it means she gets the nose of actress Christina Ricci who plays her. A child in a class Penelope tells the story to suggests that the moral of the story is that a curse has only the power we grant it. It’s true, but too profound to come from the mouth of a seven-year-old.

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In the weeks and months following Katrina–next August 29 will mark the third anniversary of this hurricane–we all said something like the following to one another around here:

“We’d better do all we can while we still have the nation’s attention. People are notorious for short attention spans. The next major hurricane will draw the focus and resources in that direction, and we’ll be deserted.”

The remarkable thing is that two-and-a-half years later, that still has not happened. First and foremost, no hurricane of any size has hit the U.S. mainland during this period, so no great disaster has supplanted New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to siphon away the focus and resources.

Secondly, our nation’s leaders–many of them at any rate–are determined to make the federal government keep its promises to this region. And thirdly, the churches of America still have us on their hearts and continue to send teams of volunteers this way to rebuild homes, restore communities, and revive dashed hopes.

We’re grateful, make no mistake.

The glamour has gone off by now, however. And that’s not all bad.

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Saturday, March 1, at 9 am, I’m teaching leadership at Suburban Baptist Church in New Orleans.

Sunday, March 2, at 11 am, preaching for “Home Missions Sunday” at Bethel Baptist Church on Prine Road in Citronelle, Alabama.

Tuesday, March 11, 9 am to noon, speaking twice at the Senior Adult Rally at First Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi.

Wednesday, March 12, meeting of the board of New Orleans Baptist Missions, which administers the work of the various SBC mission centers in our city.

Friday night/Saturday morning, attending the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Foundation Board meeting.

Sunday night, March 23 at 6 pm, preaching at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Gordo, Alabama.

Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday mornings (March 24-26) speaking at the Senior Adult Revival for the Baptists of Pickens County, Alabama. (Did not make a note of the name of the church where we’ll be meeting. My host is Dr. Tommy Winders of Carrollton FBC.)

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Tuesday morning, on the interstate heading toward Alexandria, I reached for my glasses to read a line on something and as I was opening them up, the right earpiece broke in two. No stress on it or anything. It was just time, I reckon.

At the Wal-Mart in Opelousas, I bought a pair of reading glasses to get me through the next couple of days, and made a mistake. I chose the cheapest things they had, which turned out to be inadequate. That night, when I got home, I used the reading glasses usually parked beside the computer. I’ve had them several years and they work just fine.

Russell, my deacon friend who runs the optical shop at Ochsners, has ordered another earpiece for my regular glasses, but it’s not in yet.

Then, today, while buying groceries, I glanced at the reading glasses I was holding in my hand, and the right earpiece was missing. While I stood there, the left one fell off. This was not my day.

I drove to Wal-Mart and paid 20 bucks for another pair. That’s why I’m able to see what’s going on the computer screen at this moment.

Walking around without my glasses feels for all the world like I’m missing my pants or shoes. Undressed.

Hurry up, Russell.

“Philanthropist follows his heart, opens his wallet” read the front-page headline in Wednesday’s paper. Leonard Riggio, chairman of Barnes and Noble, announced Tuesday that he is devoting 20 million dollars from his family’s charitable foundation to erecting 120 homes in the Gentilly neighborhood. The paper says, “Those involved in Project Home Again believe it is the largest philanthropic project launched in New Orleans since the storm.”

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Sunday morning, Thomas Strong, pastor of Metairie Baptist Church, was preaching on Mark 12 in a message he called “Preparing for Easter.” He told this story from a writer named Joyce Halliday.

An elementary schoolteacher was asked to go by the burn unit of the local hospital. A child had come through a tragic house fire, and was in critical condition. The instructions were rather odd. “Go by and talk to him about nouns and adverbs.” She thought that was bizarre, but someone had decided it would help the child, and anything that would do that, she was in favor of.

A nurse showed her into the PICU. The child was wrapped in bandages with only portions of his face visible. The nurse said he had been unresponsive up to that point. The teacher pulled up a chair and introduced herself, then said, “They asked me to come by and talk with you about nouns and adverbs.” So she did, feeling more and more foolish the whole time. After a bit, she wished the child well and left.

The next day, she decided to check on the child. As she approached the intensive care unit, a nurse met her in the hall. “What did you do yesterday?” The teacher stammered and began apologizing. “I know it was silly to talk with him about nouns and adverbs, but those were my instructions. I’m sorry.” The nurse said, “No–whatever you did worked wonders. Come and see.”

The child was still in bandages, but his face was animated and he was speaking. Why had a little lesson like this changed him so much? The boy said, “I knew they wouldn’t ask a teacher to talk to me about nouns and adverbs if they thought there was no hope.”

Thomas Strong said, “God would not have sent His Son for a people for whom there was no hope.”

Somewhere I read that people can live 6 weeks without food, 2 weeks without water, but not a day without hope.

Some texts that come to my preacher-mind are these….

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