But he also told a little story that fits into our theme during Advent of "Making Room." I know that Christmas is now over, but I like the idea of us still thinking about what or who we can make room for in our lives that will open us up to something good and transforming.
Oursler's story is about an older couple who had entered the lobby of a small hotel on a stormy night in Philadelphia. They told the hotel clerk that all the big hotels were full, and asked if he could possibly give them a room there. The clerk told them that there were three conventions going on in town, and there were no accommodations anywhere.
"Every guest room is taken," he explained. "But still, I simply can't send a nice couple like you out into the rain in the middle of the night. Would you perhaps be willing to sleep in my room?" The couple said they would, but wondered where he would sleep. The clerk said, "Oh, I'll make out just fine; don't worry about me." (We don't actually know where the clerk spent the night, on a spare couch in the hotel somewhere, no doubt, if he got to sleep at all.)
The next morning, as he paid the bill, the older man said to the clerk, "You are the kind of manager who should be the boss of the best hotel in the United States. Maybe someday I'll build one for you."
The clerk laughed and didn't think much more about it, but two years later he received a letter containing a round-trip ticket to New York City, and a request that he call upon his guest of that rainy night. When he arrived in New York, the older man led the young clerk to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street and pointed to a vast new building there, a palace of reddish stone, with turrets and watchtowers, like a castle from a fairy tale.
"That," he declared, "is the hotel I have just built for you to manage." The young man couldn't believe it, this was so much grander than the hotel he was currently managing, grander than anything he'd ever seen. He learned that his benefactor was the wealthy William Waldorf Astor, and the hotel, which would become the most famous of its day, the original Waldorf-Astoria. The young man, George C. Boldt, from this start, would go on to become fairly famous as an entrepreneur and innovator in hotel management.
So you never know what might happen by simply being friendly and welcoming and helpful, although getting something out of it for yourself is not the reason George Boldt did it, nor why we should.
But in the afterglow of Christmas, I can't help but still feel the pull of our theme of "Making Room," making room for something good to happen, making room for all the possibilities and potential and promise of life, making room to help and serve and give. Making room, in other words, for Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
Grace and Hope to you, and may you continue to Make Room?
Pastor Duane
