A Late Bloomer

You might call me a “late bloomer.” In fact, I am just that, a person who, late in life, found himself involved in things he never dreamed of. And if you knew me, you’d be as surprised as I am. Why? Because no one could have predicted what transpired in my later years. Not my friends, not my family and especially, not me!

Go back through your Bible and see how many of us late bloomers you find. I wager that you’ll be amazed.

Of course, you know about the advanced age of Noah when he was called by God to build the ark. And you will no doubt remember the ages of Abraham and Sarah when they conceived Isaac. And Joseph? He was well into middle age when he finally got out of prison, promoted by pharaoh to lead the Egyptian nation. 

Moses was eighty years old when he returned to face pharaoh after God called him from the burning bush. For the forty years prior, he had done nothing more than shepherd his father-in-law’s sheep, hiding out in Midian. And his successor, Joshua, was in his sixties when he was chosen to lead Israel into the promised land.

Elizabeth and Zachariah were old when they conceived John the Baptist. Elizabeth was actually considered barren. Yet God worked through them to give birth to the forerunner to Jesus.

Likewise, the Apostle Paul, after his life-changing experience on the road to Damascus, answered his true calling to bring the truth of Christ to the gentile world. He was in his forties when blinded and his life turned upside down, and he remained faithful to his calling until his death, well into his sixties.

The gospel accounts in your New Testament were written late in the first century, decades after the earthly life of Christ. Consequently, you can deduce that these eyewitnesses to the life and ministry of Jesus were quite old when they took pen to paper. There is no evidence that they intended, as young men, to write these accounts.

Perhaps their advanced age might even have been their motivation for writing, as they did not wish the eyewitness generation to pass without memorializing what they had seen and heard. 

And in a roundabout way, that’s where I came in.

You won’t know my name, but I promise, after reading this letter to you in the future, you will no doubt agree that I played an important role in your faith. You see, I was a scribe.

A scribe? How can anyone possibly think that a simple scribe could do something important? I mean, people doing important things must be famous, right? People will surely take notice of them, praise them and remember them, right?

After all, how important can a scribe be? Scribes just write stuff down, nothing more. Surely, if I did anything worth reporting, it would have been noted. And you could at the least find my name in the dusty pages of some obscure history book. 

Yes, I was a scribe, and what was so important was my work on what you in your time call the Gospel of Matthew. You see, the original manuscript of that gospel, along with those of the other three gospels, was lost to antiquity. It no longer exists, as you no doubt recall. No one knows what happened to it, but considering its importance, it’s not surprising that copies would be made. And they were. Yet even most of the early copies were also lost, possibly destroyed by the Romans, who had outlawed our new faith.

But my copy wasn’t lost. Yes, it does exist, and a translated version of my copy is what you read today in your Bible. And that copy, which I transcribed from one of the surviving earlier ones, which was eventually lost, was made in my later years. So, what you read in your time as the Gospel of Matthew can be traced back over the centuries, with my copy as the only remaining link to the original manuscript.

You may be asking, what is the point of all of this? And what does it all have to do with being a “late bloomer?”

There are several reasons why you should know about this. The first and most obvious is the fragility of the chain of documents going back to the original writings. I have to believe that God himself insured that the precious gospel message would not be lost, even though powerful forces worked to that very end. Sometimes, it’s difficult to see the lengths to which evil will go to damage our faith.

It's also an example of how a humble older person, like myself, can do something that at the time seems unremarkable, but which turns out to be noteworthy, even important, in the history of our faith. 

Yes, and I was a very humble person. You see, I was an unlikely choice to create the copy that you read today. Why? Well, first of all, I was not a strong believer in what we at the time called “The Way.” My wife, bless her soul, was much more committed to the Risen Christ than I was, and I more or less tagged along with her.

You would not call me “successful.” I ran a small shop that was owned by a local family in our Antioch neighborhood. They were not believers, and for mostly economic reasons, they supported the cults of the Greek gods. In fact, we sold images of those gods and I can tell you that they were quite popular. 

Early depiction of a scribe

Though I was not ambitious, I ran the shop well enough to keep my job and make a small profit for the owners. The best I can say is that it was a job and that it kept food on our table. I had no plans or goals for anything higher, following what I now view as an undirected path. For me, the future was a blank slate.

But as I aged into my sixties, I began to ask myself questions. Questions like how long could I keep my job? The owners had already hinted that someone younger might sell more of their products than I could. If they let me go, what would I do? How could I support my wife and me? Our children were grown, but they were not wealthy enough to provide for us in addition to their own families.

These questions had no simple answers. All I could do was to hold on as long as I could.

And then my wife suddenly and unexpectedly died. Her death sent me into a tailspin. She was the heart and soul of our family and as I reflected, I realized that it was her faith in God that kept it all together for us. In essence, she was our family’s spiritual leader, not me.

My life was so shattered that I could no longer work. My job in the shop was over, and I was suddenly counted among the poor. And at my age, finding another position would be extremely unlikely. You must understand that in our world, we had no concept whatsoever of what you, in your time, call “retirement.”

That’s when things began to change for me. Penniless, alone, and grieving, I entered a period of deep soul-searching. I began to pray, a discipline that was not comfortable for me. And like it or not, I was forced to accept the charity of others.

Although prayer did not come easily for me, I did not give up. People from our tiny faith community, mostly friends of my deceased wife, began to come around, offering what they could: food, friendship, and listening. Yes, listening, and that proved to be so important. I began to pour out my heart to these believers, whose friendships shifted from my wife to me.

Hearing the miracle stories of others, I might have expected a swift response from God at this point, a quick answer to my prayers, meeting the needs that I was laying at his feet.

But that did not happen. Now approaching seventy, I began to consider that this was all that there would be to my life: poverty, loneliness and a constant sense of loss. I wanted more from life, even from my senior years. But I could see no path forward other than the one I was walking.

And that’s where the Gospel of Matthew came in. First, I heard it spoken by the pastor of our tiny faith community. In our weekly worship service, he read it from a copy that had been obtained from the bishop in our community (yes, we had bishops, even in our century). 

I can’t begin to describe the feeling of hope that came to me from hearing this gospel message. The words of Jesus, and especially his “sermon on the mount” rang so true to me, and etched themselves deeply into my conscious thought. It was almost as if those words had a life of their own, and that they were speaking directly to me!

I kept praying and still, nothing happened. But all along, my faith was coming alive. I have to say that for me, the pain of losing my wife, my livelihood and my self-respect served to open the door to the presence of God in my life. I can say it in no other terms. I felt an emptiness so profound, so deep and so painful. But little by little, God was filling me, and little by little, my prayers began to change. 

Finally, now in my seventies, I realized that God was growing a seed of faith in me that was mine alone. My prayers had shifted from material things to spiritual ones. I sought meaning, depth, and a sense of the presence of God in my life. And glory be to God the Father, these prayers were being answered!

I wanted my personal copy of the Gospel of Matthew. That way, I could read it on my own, pondering its meanings and allowing it to literally speak the words of God to me.

So, I borrowed the gospel owned by our pastor. Day by day, I copied it, and day by day, it spoke to me more deeply. I learned that the gospel message is a living thing, especially the words and deeds of Jesus, which were literally coming alive! 

I took my time, not only for the sake of accuracy, but also to give my heart the space to open itself fully to every word. It was a wonderful experience, one that I could never have dreamed of even a few years before.

Our pastor finally gave his copy away, seeking to help another tiny Christian community nearby. No one knows what happened to that copy, but it was possibly lost in one of the many waves of Roman oppression.

And my copy? Our church community used it for years, and it was saved from the Romans. And that copy, my copy, now translated into hundreds of languages, is the one you can read in your Bible today.

So yes, I was a late bloomer. It just goes to show that you never know when God may call you and use you. It’s just too hard to see where he is leading. And all you can do is open your heart to follow him, and say yes!