In the early 1960s, my father, a pastor in West Los Angeles, was invited to speak at a meeting of the Hollywood Christian Group at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. I went along and met Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

​

Even now, after all these years, there is something delightful about being able to write that sentence. Some names belong so thoroughly to the world of our youth that meeting the people who bear them brings two worlds together. Here were people I knew from the television screen, and here was my father, invited to bring God’s Word. Hollywood and the pastor’s household had come into the same room.

​

I would not pretend that I understood the deeper significance of that meeting at the time. Meeting Roy Rogers and Dale Evans was quite enough. But memories sometimes wait for us to grow old enough to receive what else they have to give.

​

Looking back, I find myself thinking about the curious fellowship created when people gather to hear God’s Word. The world has its own arrangements. Some people are recognized wherever they go; others spend their lives doing work that attracts little or no attention. We learn those distinctions early, and we rarely stop measuring ourselves by them. Even when we protest that fame does not matter, we are pleased when someone important remembers our name.

​

There is nothing sinful about enjoying a meeting with someone we admire. Who doesn’t enjoy a “brush with greatness?” The trouble comes when admiration becomes a way of assigning human worth. We want some of another person’s significance to rub off on us. We tell the story, and somewhere beneath the pleasure of remembering lies the small hope that our listeners will think a little more of us.

​

I am hardly exempt. I have begun this article by telling you whom I met.

​

The old self can make a credential out of almost anything. It can even turn a Christian gathering into evidence that it has moved in the right circles. And when worldly credentials fail, religious ones are readily available. We may have no fame to offer, but perhaps we can offer our sincerity, our service, our years in the church. Surely something about us must establish our right to be received.

​

The Law brings that enterprise to its end. It tells the truth about the person beneath the reputation, including the pastor and the pastor’s son. None of us can assemble a life that places God in our debt. The applause fades, the explanations run out, and we stand before him with empty hands.

​

That is where the Gospel has something to say.

​

Christ does not wait for us to become impressive enough to deserve his attention. He comes to sinners. At the cross, he takes upon himself the judgment we cannot escape, and in his resurrection he opens a future we could never earn. His promise reaches us from outside the anxious business of establishing our worth: your sins are forgiven; you belong to me.

​

That promise gives a remarkable freedom to a room full of people. The famous may lay down the burden of being admired. The unnoticed need not struggle to become visible. Each has a place because Christ has given it.

​

I remain grateful that I went along with my father that day. Meeting Roy Rogers and Dale Evans is a happy memory. But age has taught me to treasure something beyond the distinction of having met them: the mercy that gathers people whose lives look very different and gives them the same Savior.

​

You may spend your life before an audience or care for someone whose needs leave you little time for anything else. Christ’s promise is addressed to you in either place. When the audience has gone home and the day’s work is finished, he still knows your name. You are his.

 

So, with a grateful tip of the hat to Roy and Dale, happy trails, my friends. And should you wander off the trail now and then, as some of us manage to do even without a horse, take heart. The Good Shepherd knows exactly where to find you.

​