Lesser Mortals

I love the movie, “A Beautiful Mind,” the story of a schizophrenic genius, and winner of the Nobel Prize; John Nash. Early on in the video, Russell Crowe, (who portrays that psychotic mathematician) climbs to the rooftop of his dormitory at Princeton, and screams sundry things to passing students, below. For whatever reason, one two word phrase resides in my memory.

“Lesser Mortals”

I’ve met them, heard reports of plenty more, and read newspaper accounts, and seen television coverage of yet more.

There’s plenty of Lesser Mortals out there.

I once attended a funeral in which a couple in the back pews sat staring into the screens of their cell phones, and for a very long time.

Lesser Mortals

I had just gotten out of my car at a local supermarket when a young man motored slowly by me; his boom box blaring as loudly as I’ve ever heard.

Lesser Mortals

There’s a nice dog path a hundred yards from my house, smack in the middle of our tree-lined little community. One of the most uniquely beautiful areas of the city in which I live. Yesterday, as I was walking my little pooch, I noticed that someone had thrown two large mattresses into the undergrowth adjacent to the dog path.

Lesser Mortals

Just a few examples of the lesser infractions among the Lesser Mortals of the world.

The trusted adult who sexually abused hundreds of innocent children. The convenience store thief who, during the course of his crime, murdered a couple of clerks. The drunken driver who, while sober, knowingly walked into a bar ready, willing and able to drink himself into oblivion, and subsequently got back behind the wheel, and ushered several other motorists into eternity.

(Much) Lesser Mortals

Having expended a great deal of time, care and effort mentoring dozens of “potential people of excellence,” and having seen some abrogate every bit of good I expended on them, with Elijah I have been prone to say,

¹⁴ “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. And
… I am the only one left…” (1^st Kings 19)
(or in language more relevant to our time)
“I have been zealous to seek God’s will and way; while they who began well, and who should have known better have rejected the path which they once pursued, have stepped away from best in favor of mediocre, and have sacrificed their conscience on the altar of the carnal, the ordinary and the mundane.”
(and)
… I am the only one left…”
(Lesser Mortals)
And yet for every evidence to the contrary, the ultimate progenitor of Truth counters the notion that righteousness, and conscience, and function and priority have taken a holiday.
^18” Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” (1^st Kings 19)
The loyal, the brave, the good, the committed, the excellent are still among us.
I was reminded of this the other day.
When alerted that a car was barreling down a one way Tampa parkway in the opposite direction of traffic, and realizing two people in an automobile just in front of his cruiser would almost certainly be its first and last victims, a courageous deputy maneuvered between the two vehicles, and surrendered his life for people whom he did not know.
“Greater love has no man than this…”
The most outstanding example of selflessness and sacrifice to which I have ever been exposed, and an event which has had an inestimable impact upon my life.
God has, indeed, reserved some to Himself.
I find myself in the company of one better than myself, one to whose character I might aspire, and who might properly refer to me as a,
Lesser Mortal
I suppose everything is relative.

 By William McDonald, PhD. (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 32. Copyright pending

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