The Boss

I'm sitting here watching the SuperBowl halftime show by Bruce Springsteen. It takes me back to a roommate I had in college. Bobby was a BIG big BIG Bruce fan. Bobby would have loved that show.

Bobby was in a wheel chair due to the progressive terminal illness that would eventually kill him. We lived in the "wheel chair wing" of our dorm. We had a couple of born-again Christians living across the hall from us.

One of the fellas across the hall, (who, like me, was not in a wheelchair,) was a charismatic young man who was a leader in a local university student ministry. He used to tell the fellows in wheelchairs that "If you have enough faith, God will take you out of that chair." Watching the guys in chairs trying to earn their healing by "believing harder" was one of the cruelest things I've ever seen in my life.

If you're confined in a chair for life, there is nothing you want more than to be freed from that confinement. To attribute it to a spiritual deficiency in addition to a physical limitation was just horrible. It was just one of those cases where a young person can be so right they can't help being wrong. I guess we've all been there in our own ways. But when I think of Bobby, my fur still get up a little bit about that incident.

Tonight, 24 years later, I realize what I should have told that guy across the hall back then: "If YOUR faith was sufficient you'd be able to heal them." (Hey! Peter just had to be asked!)

It didn't need to be said. I need to get over it...

(However, this does set a personal record for "Longest time after the fact to think of the perfect comeback.")