Author Robert Fulghum someimes, when attending lectures, would respond in
an unusual way to the speaker’s final, routine words: “Are there any
questions?”
“Yes,” Fulghum sometimes says. Then he asks, “What is the meaning of life?”
People generally laugh and gather
their notes, prepared to leave as the speaker smiles and shrugs off the
question. But one day, to his surprise,
Fulghum got a serious answer. It was
from Dr. Alexander Papaderos, a Greek philosopher and the founder of an institute
on the
“Yes,” said Fulghum, “what is the
meaning of life?”
The other attendees whispered and
chuckled and prepared to leave, but Dr. Papaderos held up his hand. “I will answer your question,” he said. He drew from his pocket a small round mirror,
about the size of a quarter. As he was
growing up during the war, his family was very poor, and he had few toys. One day he found the broken pieces of a mirror,
left over from the wreck of a German motorcycle. He tried in vain to piece the bits together,
but finally ended up discarding all but the largest piece.
“This one,” he said, holding it
higher. “And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became
fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the
sun would never shine–in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the
most inaccessible places I could find.”
“I kept the little mirror, and as I
went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the
challenge of the game. As I became a
man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor
for what I might do in my life....”
“With what I have I can reflect
light into the dark places of this world–into the black places in the hearts of
men–and change some things in some people.”
Having said that, Dr. Papaderos took
his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the rays of daylight
streaming through the window and reflected them in Robert Fulghum’s face.
The truth is all of us; yes you and
I are reflectors; the question is what are we reflecting?
✞ Reflect Jesus to others through your life.
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