Listen for the “Holy Rattle”
by Ronald “Dee” Vaughan
My car has a rattle in the glove compartment; “rattle,” the object, not “rattle,” the sound. When my brother, sister and I emptied our home place after our parents died, I inherited my own baby rattle, an engraved metal bell attached to a teething ring. Area merchants presented this gift to my parents to celebrate the new life that had been added to their family. The bell is engraved with my initials and the time and date of my birth. When I took possession of this rattle, more than half a century after first receiving it, I put it in the glove compartment of my car so it wouldn’t get lost in the mountain of items I was taking from our home place or be damaged on the journey to my home. When I unpacked my load of sentimental treasures, including my first electric guitar I found hibernating in my parents’ attic, I forgot to get the rattle. A few days later, as I was accelerating away from an intersection after the traffic light turned green, I noticed a faint jingle coming from the passenger side of my car. After pondering what the source of this new sound might be without actually taking my hands off of the steering wheel to search for it, I remembered my glove compartment cargo. My baby rattle jingled just a bit each time I stopped, started, or turned. Each time I heard that sound, I remembered my home place and basked in the thought that people joyfully greeted my arrival in the world. Again and again, I forgot to take the rattle out of my glove compartment and bring it into my home to display it with some other family keepsakes. Again and again, that sound showed up on my journey and took my heart and mind to good memories and to the reminder that my life is a gift worth celebrating. After a while, I decided that my rattle was more valuable to me as a ride-along reminder of life’s goodness than it would be as a silent souvenir in “Dee’s Museum.” Almost every day, and especially on days when I drive home carrying the burdensome baggage of unfinished business, unanswered questions, and unwelcome challenges, that rattle in my glove compartment offers me a reset of my perspective and a much-needed invitation, “Celebrate your life.”
Pastoral ministry is the only life I’ve known. I can’t compare it to other careers. I don’t single it out as the world’s toughest job. But I do know that a ministry life is often very noisy. A minister’s heart and mind are often filled with the sounds of church members voicing heartbreaking problems or confidence-crushing criticism, the sound of memories of your weakest and worst moments, the crashing sound of the waterfall of unending demands and deadlines, the awkward thud of a sermon or a program or a dream that falls flat. Those noises, if left unaddressed and unchallenged can drown out the sounds of the goodness of life and the glory of God. Every person wearing the yoke of vocational ministry needs some regular specific reminders that life is good and God is great. In whatever form it takes, each of us needs a baby rattle in our glove compartment, a sweet soft sound we can hear in the background of our noisy journey, a still small voice that says, “You are God’s beloved child. Celebrate your life!”
The Holy Rattle (photo credit Ronald “Dee” Vaughan.)