Justice and Grace
Stories
Contents
“Justice and Grace” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Moon And Stars And Human Beings” by David O. Bales
“Leaving? Father and Mother” by David O. Bales
Justice and Grace
by Peter Andrew Smith
Mark 10:2-16
Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened them and looked at the passage in front of her again. Why did it have to be about divorce? There was no way she could talk about that with her Bible study partner. She stared at the words, but they didn’t change. What was she going to do? Her phone rang and she was relieved to be able to leave that problem behind even for a moment.
“Hey,” Lisa said. “You free to talk?”
“Sure.” Sarah felt her heard racing at the sound of her Bible study partner’s voice. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the passage we were going to discuss and I’m not sure when I’ll have the time.”
“Okay.” There was a long pause. “When you do think could you call me back?”
“I can, but I’m not exactly sure when I can get to it.” Sarah paused. “Did you already look at it?”
“I did.” Lisa said nothing for a moment and then whispered. “Did you know that Tom and I are getting divorced?”
“No I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
“Sarah, when I read the passage, I don’t know if God will ever forgive me.” Lisa started to cry. “I asked Tom to go to counseling with me, but he says we’ve wasted too much money on trying to save something that is so broken. I mean I want to make it work but...”
“Sometimes a divorce is the only way forward.”
Lisa sniffed. “Really?”
“Yes, I honestly believe that.” Sarah took another deep breath. “You know I’m divorced, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, after twenty years of marriage with Ron everything fell apart.” Waves of emotion crashed over Sarah. “I still love him in some way, but it is much better that we are apart and have moved on with our lives.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lisa paused. “I worry about the children.”
“My oldest told me that it was a relief to them when we finally split.”
“She said that?”
“Not in so many words but I started to see how our arguing and problems were spilling into their lives.” Sarah paused. “If we were able to stay together and work things out that would have been one thing, but their lives were worse before the divorce.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Lucy said. “But the passage still bothers me. I feel like I have failed in my faith.”
“A divorce is the failure of a marriage. I came to accept that a long time ago. That’s why I said that sometimes divorce is the only way forward.” Sarah looked at the passage in front of her. “I wonder if that is what Jesus means when he talks about Moses allowing divorce because of the hardness of heart.”
“Tom’s heart is certainly hard.” Sarah heard Lisa flipping the pages of her Bible. “The other words about adultery and the intention of marriage still make me feel awful though. I thought the gospel was about God’s love and grace.”
“Divorce is awful, and I don’t think anyone should pretend it isn’t.” Sarah looked further along in the passage. “If one of your girls ended up getting divorced, how would you look at them?”
“It would break my heart.” Lisa said. “Why?”
“Would you tell them they weren’t welcome at your house anymore?”
“Of course not, she’s my child, she is always welcome, and I will always love her.” Lisa paused. “Why are you asking this?”
“The end of the passage is about the children coming to Jesus and the disciples stopping them and then Jesus saying to let them come because everyone needs to accept the kingdom of heaven like a child to enter it.”
“I saw that, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with the section on divorce.”
“Neither did I,” Sarah said. “Now though I wonder if it means that we can still come to God and in fact we should come because God won’t reject us or condemn us but weep with us and help us.”
There was silence for a few moments as both women thought about their lives and the gospel passage in front of them.
Lisa spoke first. “Sarah, calling you was one of the hardest things I have ever done but I am so glad I did. I still don’t like the passage, but you have given me lots to think about. Can we talk later?”
“Certainly, I’ll give you a call after lunch.”
After Lisa hung up Sarah looked at the passage one more time. It still bothered her but now she knew where to go with her pain and questions. She bowed her head and started to pray.
* * *
Moon And Stars and Human Beings
by David O. Bales
Psalm 8
Cody had stopped his car once before and stepped out into the darkness. Not many cars so late on this stretch of northern Nevada. He halted again to get out and enter the night. He looked up as he’d done for the last six nights. A soon-to-set quarter moon. No clouds. An eternal array of stars. “All that old light, finally landing here,” he said to himself, to the world, and probably to God. He’d spoken and wished he hadn’t; because he knew now (almost) for sure that he didn’t need to employ words.
Cody was exhilarated—or exhausted? —from the week’s spiritual retreat. His mind had gone from whirling like a gerbil in a treadmill to almost waking sleep. If he’d known this might happen, would he have attended? And, if Grace had known …?
Cody had been intrigued by the brochure’s headline promising a week of prayer, spiritual guidance, and renewal at the monastery. Neither Cody nor Grace knew much about monasteries. Because Grace had been feeling poorly lately— “It’s a chronic thing,” she said—Cody wished he hadn’t mentioned it to her. Once he’d let it slip, however, she was set upon his attending. She hadn’t read the brochure well—neither had he—just stated, “Pastors need renewal.” She said it as only Grace could say it. They each had veto power over the other, but Cody seldom, for spiritual reasons, vetoed Grace. It wasn’t only that they’d fallen in love and married. She’d led him to faith in Christ. His family had been on Satan’s side of the spiritual realm, as Grace put it. She was the first person to tell Cody, “Jesus was made sin for you. He took the punishment you deserved and died in your place on the cross.”
That had settled it for Cody. He’d trusted Christ and become a Christian. After they married Grace urged him to attend Bible College, “Just to find your gift.” She soon discerned his gift. He became a pastor.
A chilly gust nudged him. He leaned against the car as its cooling engine ticked. He scanned the stars above the horizon. Despite the cold, he felt comfortable on the edge of silence. Two hours more to drive, yet he enjoyed standing in the windy dark covered only with stars.
At the retreat, the majority were Roman Catholic lay people along with a few priests, a good portion of Protestants too, including a couple of pastors. At the afternoon’s introductions a nun noted that the days would be an experience beyond the limitations of doctrine. Cody was jolted. Beyond doctrine? Abandoning the explanation of God’s work in Jesus the Christ? Since Cody became a Christian, he’d devoted his energy to understanding what God accomplished in Christ. His switch from “secular” thinking, as Grace put it, had been almost instant and nearly complete. He fled his former orientation to knowledge. He’d loved learning, like a way of life. His high school teachers glowed to have a student interested in anything they put before him.
When he became a Christian at 19, with Grace’s influence, he rejected worldly learning. For eight years now he’d lived within doctrine, taught doctrine, maybe even prayed doctrine, as Grace had influenced his approach to the faith. When he heard “beyond doctrine” his mind gasped, “Oh no. Are they going to try to make me speak in tongues?”
The next leader, the second nun, spoke for five minutes. She pointed to the wall chart to demonstrate how Christians across the ages have responded to God’s grace. “These are patterns, styles, of Christian response to God’s goodness, spiritual disciplines. There’s more than listed here as well as blends, as we each are blended individuals. To name a few”; she pointed to “Activists. People with this gift meet God in their serving others. It’s where they feel called and find themselves empowered. God not only comes to them this way, but God’s love also goes through them to others. Sacramental.” She tapped on the word. “Heavy on Roman Catholic types. We’re drawn and nurtured at the altar, surrounded by the liturgy, and framed by the church year. All of life becomes a sacrament to us, disclosing God in our midst.” She skipped a few to arrive at “Academic. These people, like Father Gabriel,” she indicated the priest beside her, “are inspired by study into the scriptures, faith, and all of life.
“In a sense these spiritual gifts are worldly proof that God loves us all the same,” she said, “because God gives us different gifts.” She smiled and paused. “Isn’t that how we treat our children? We don’t give children the same gifts, do we? Other than hand-me-downs, I mean.” Cody’s nervousness came out with others in a laugh.
The priest, Father Gabriel, a short man with ears that nearly doubled the width of his face, stood to describe the retreat’s approach as “ground up Christianity, our experience of God down here among us where God has joined the neighborhood in Jesus, rented a house just around the block on Capernaum’s First Avenue.” Cody was intrigued if not assured of such an approach to the faith, but he decided to remain through the afternoon session. He was the only person lugging his big Bible.
He’d like to remain standing here in the friendly dark, but he forced himself into the car to complete the long drive home. At least he’d be in silence, which he’d come to view as a companion. What a change: The instruction and permission to be silent before God. Little quoting of the Bible, just reference to Mary and Martha showing two different, maybe inborn divinely granted, ways to respond to Jesus: One busily serving meals, the other at Jesus’ feet. Each gift has its place among God’s people. Without Mary, no worship. But after worship, if no Martha, no dinner.
The experience of the past six days jumbled together in him. It felt like a bundle circulating in his chest, sometimes near his neck, sometimes closer to his stomach. He drove again, setting his cruise control to stop his cyclic speeding and decelerating.
The week was prayer, hours holding oneself open to God without the need either to beg or to praise, just to be within God’s loving and transforming presence. And then the telescope. Father Gabriel brought his computerized tracking six-inch aperture telescope.
“Always bring it on spiritual retreat,” Father Gabriel announced. “I’ll set up outside the refectory after dark every evening. I invite you to come share the heavens with me.” Cody wasn’t first in line, but he was present that first evening. He’d been intrigued with astronomy in high school but never looked through a telescope. With the others, he ooed and aahed. Father Gabriel taught science at a Catholic high school. He recounted how humans discovered that the irregularly moving “stars” were planets and he described how they could be identified, and their paths predicted. The group enjoyed looking into the shadowed moonscape and were thrilled to see what had been called Mars’s canals.
Father Gabriel welcomed Cody every night, his smile making his ears wiggle. Father Gabriel instructed him to spot a particular crater on the moon or a volcano on Mars, then led him, “now at about 9:30, see that darker line?” and he’d tell Cody the name and what astronomers concluded about it. He knew where each spacecraft landed on the moon and Mars, what experiments they performed, and what discoveries they’d made. He pointed the telescope to where the two Voyager spacecraft fled the solar system. Cody learned that our solar system is getting larger faster, that the universe could hold ten trillion galaxes, and that it is 13.82 billion years old, not a mere 13.7. During his days of prayer Cody often saw the image of Mars or the moon before him. He was being lifted out of his usual world. He felt as though life had expanded.
He texted Grace everyday about the people and the place and received her news that she was feeling better and praying for him. Now as the miles clicked by, his uneasiness grew about explaining to Grace. How could he reproduce for her what he’d seen and felt, what he’d thought and wondered about, and how his orientation in life and faith had shifted. He caught himself when his thinking led to worry. He wasn’t going to allow anxiety about the future destroy God’s new link with him. He didn’t know what he’d tell Grace or how, but for now he stopped his car a last time. The road offered a safe shoulder with a wide view over a broken canyon wall toward a red quarter moon slipping into the horizon.
Beside the car he looked up, took a breath as deeply as his lungs allowed, and expressed, beyond words, “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Preaching point: The heavens above help open us to heaven in our midst.
* * *
Leaving? Father And Mother
by David O. Bales
Genesis 2:18-24
After 34 years if Lawrence hadn’t accepted himself as peculiar, at least he’d gotten used to it. He never fit in at his school. He’d grown up understanding himself as different than others. His parents weren’t like other parents. They were off by themselves, scorning the sins of their neighbors, always pointing him to the signs of the approaching end of the world, and instructing him in Christ’s separation of the sheep from the goats.
It was his joy with Patty that now incited his head-on charge into the convictions that surrounded his parents like a prison wall. He’d been so happy, wary, but happy to tell them. He’d heard their opinion of doomed “mixed marriages”; but he hoped, foolishly so, that they’d trust him or at least want him to be happy. He also was encouraged by Patty’s parents. She’d taken him to dinner at their home a week before. “You’ll like them,” she said. “They’ve always been there for me. And,” she said with a sly smile, “I’ve told them about you.” His joy with Patty and his relief at meeting her parents—being surrounded by their kindness and concern—bolstered him to break the news to his parents.
Surely his parents realized what was coming. All he talked about these days was Patty. He and Patty had been inseparable for seven months, since Patty had backed into his car in the Safeway parking lot and waited, shaking, close to tears, to inform him and hand him her insurance card. When Lawrence first mentioned Patty to his parents, they’d asked, almost in unison, “Has she been saved?”
He needed an entire hour of the evening’s visit to work up his courage and speak his memorized statement. Dinner was nearly over when he pushed aside the half-eaten pork chop on his plate, laid down his fork and, with head bowed, spoke to the table, “Patty and I are going to marry.”
His father seemed prepared. He threw up his arms, “Absolutely not. We cannot abide a mixed marriage. I forbid it.” His father gave his undebatable instructions with eyebrows narrowed. If Lawrence were to paint a portrait of his father, that would be the expression onto the canvas.
Lawrence said, “It’s just that she’s never been around Christians. She’s a really good person, and she’s interested in Jesus.” His shoulders slumped as they always did when he spoke with his father. He managed to peep, “We’re soulmates.”
His mother rose from her chair moaning, “Ooooh,” and sobbed her way to the bedroom.
His father pointed to the ceiling as he spoke what Lawrence hoped would be the last word, “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?” That was not, however, his father’s last word. “When Jesus returns, you’ll be so ashamed. Before all, you’ll have to put away your pagan wife as Ezra commanded.” Lawrence turned to leave, and his father spoke as though a recorded tornado warning, “We will never condone such a marriage.”
Lawrence rushed from his parents’ home, relieved that, no matter how much Patty wanted to be with him, he’d persuaded her that telling them alone was best. Yet now he wasn’t sure about getting married. He’d promised to drive to her apartment when he left his parents. After ten minutes he realized he was on the freeway greatly exceeding the speed limit. He drove off at Exit 23 and into a Denny’s parking lot.
He sat with the streetlight’s amber filtering through his car window. He tried to exercise the pros and cons that he’d been taught at work to employ before making an important decision. This became his prayer. But his mind was as unruly as a frantic dog wearing a path beside its fence. No, that’s not it. You wait until a path is worn before creating a sidewalk. No, that’s not it either. His thinking had fuzzied and flipped again. For an hour he exhausted himself, replaying what his father said as his mother wailed in the bedroom.
He struggled to place the problem on a level footing, to shove to the side all the extraneous details, to focus on what was vital. Lawrence was intelligent enough to know he was an odd duck. No girlfriends in high school. None at work. 34 years old and never a girlfriend! Patty wasn’t perfect. But she loved him. Her parents were kind. He and Patty shared so many interests. They’d begun finishing each other’s sentences.
His father had hauled out scripture to justify his parents’ disapproval. Lawrence had lived with the Bible all his life, memorized lots of it. Now all that came to mind was Genesis, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife.” In Lawrence’s case it seemed more that his father and mother had left him.
Preaching point: Marriage is (almost, almost, almost always) good.
(2 Corinthians 6:10. Ezra chapters 9 and 10.)
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 3, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Justice and Grace” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Moon And Stars And Human Beings” by David O. Bales
“Leaving? Father and Mother” by David O. Bales
Justice and Grace
by Peter Andrew Smith
Mark 10:2-16
Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened them and looked at the passage in front of her again. Why did it have to be about divorce? There was no way she could talk about that with her Bible study partner. She stared at the words, but they didn’t change. What was she going to do? Her phone rang and she was relieved to be able to leave that problem behind even for a moment.
“Hey,” Lisa said. “You free to talk?”
“Sure.” Sarah felt her heard racing at the sound of her Bible study partner’s voice. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the passage we were going to discuss and I’m not sure when I’ll have the time.”
“Okay.” There was a long pause. “When you do think could you call me back?”
“I can, but I’m not exactly sure when I can get to it.” Sarah paused. “Did you already look at it?”
“I did.” Lisa said nothing for a moment and then whispered. “Did you know that Tom and I are getting divorced?”
“No I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”
“Sarah, when I read the passage, I don’t know if God will ever forgive me.” Lisa started to cry. “I asked Tom to go to counseling with me, but he says we’ve wasted too much money on trying to save something that is so broken. I mean I want to make it work but...”
“Sometimes a divorce is the only way forward.”
Lisa sniffed. “Really?”
“Yes, I honestly believe that.” Sarah took another deep breath. “You know I’m divorced, don’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, after twenty years of marriage with Ron everything fell apart.” Waves of emotion crashed over Sarah. “I still love him in some way, but it is much better that we are apart and have moved on with our lives.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lisa paused. “I worry about the children.”
“My oldest told me that it was a relief to them when we finally split.”
“She said that?”
“Not in so many words but I started to see how our arguing and problems were spilling into their lives.” Sarah paused. “If we were able to stay together and work things out that would have been one thing, but their lives were worse before the divorce.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Lucy said. “But the passage still bothers me. I feel like I have failed in my faith.”
“A divorce is the failure of a marriage. I came to accept that a long time ago. That’s why I said that sometimes divorce is the only way forward.” Sarah looked at the passage in front of her. “I wonder if that is what Jesus means when he talks about Moses allowing divorce because of the hardness of heart.”
“Tom’s heart is certainly hard.” Sarah heard Lisa flipping the pages of her Bible. “The other words about adultery and the intention of marriage still make me feel awful though. I thought the gospel was about God’s love and grace.”
“Divorce is awful, and I don’t think anyone should pretend it isn’t.” Sarah looked further along in the passage. “If one of your girls ended up getting divorced, how would you look at them?”
“It would break my heart.” Lisa said. “Why?”
“Would you tell them they weren’t welcome at your house anymore?”
“Of course not, she’s my child, she is always welcome, and I will always love her.” Lisa paused. “Why are you asking this?”
“The end of the passage is about the children coming to Jesus and the disciples stopping them and then Jesus saying to let them come because everyone needs to accept the kingdom of heaven like a child to enter it.”
“I saw that, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with the section on divorce.”
“Neither did I,” Sarah said. “Now though I wonder if it means that we can still come to God and in fact we should come because God won’t reject us or condemn us but weep with us and help us.”
There was silence for a few moments as both women thought about their lives and the gospel passage in front of them.
Lisa spoke first. “Sarah, calling you was one of the hardest things I have ever done but I am so glad I did. I still don’t like the passage, but you have given me lots to think about. Can we talk later?”
“Certainly, I’ll give you a call after lunch.”
After Lisa hung up Sarah looked at the passage one more time. It still bothered her but now she knew where to go with her pain and questions. She bowed her head and started to pray.
* * *
Moon And Stars and Human Beings
by David O. Bales
Psalm 8
Cody had stopped his car once before and stepped out into the darkness. Not many cars so late on this stretch of northern Nevada. He halted again to get out and enter the night. He looked up as he’d done for the last six nights. A soon-to-set quarter moon. No clouds. An eternal array of stars. “All that old light, finally landing here,” he said to himself, to the world, and probably to God. He’d spoken and wished he hadn’t; because he knew now (almost) for sure that he didn’t need to employ words.
Cody was exhilarated—or exhausted? —from the week’s spiritual retreat. His mind had gone from whirling like a gerbil in a treadmill to almost waking sleep. If he’d known this might happen, would he have attended? And, if Grace had known …?
Cody had been intrigued by the brochure’s headline promising a week of prayer, spiritual guidance, and renewal at the monastery. Neither Cody nor Grace knew much about monasteries. Because Grace had been feeling poorly lately— “It’s a chronic thing,” she said—Cody wished he hadn’t mentioned it to her. Once he’d let it slip, however, she was set upon his attending. She hadn’t read the brochure well—neither had he—just stated, “Pastors need renewal.” She said it as only Grace could say it. They each had veto power over the other, but Cody seldom, for spiritual reasons, vetoed Grace. It wasn’t only that they’d fallen in love and married. She’d led him to faith in Christ. His family had been on Satan’s side of the spiritual realm, as Grace put it. She was the first person to tell Cody, “Jesus was made sin for you. He took the punishment you deserved and died in your place on the cross.”
That had settled it for Cody. He’d trusted Christ and become a Christian. After they married Grace urged him to attend Bible College, “Just to find your gift.” She soon discerned his gift. He became a pastor.
A chilly gust nudged him. He leaned against the car as its cooling engine ticked. He scanned the stars above the horizon. Despite the cold, he felt comfortable on the edge of silence. Two hours more to drive, yet he enjoyed standing in the windy dark covered only with stars.
At the retreat, the majority were Roman Catholic lay people along with a few priests, a good portion of Protestants too, including a couple of pastors. At the afternoon’s introductions a nun noted that the days would be an experience beyond the limitations of doctrine. Cody was jolted. Beyond doctrine? Abandoning the explanation of God’s work in Jesus the Christ? Since Cody became a Christian, he’d devoted his energy to understanding what God accomplished in Christ. His switch from “secular” thinking, as Grace put it, had been almost instant and nearly complete. He fled his former orientation to knowledge. He’d loved learning, like a way of life. His high school teachers glowed to have a student interested in anything they put before him.
When he became a Christian at 19, with Grace’s influence, he rejected worldly learning. For eight years now he’d lived within doctrine, taught doctrine, maybe even prayed doctrine, as Grace had influenced his approach to the faith. When he heard “beyond doctrine” his mind gasped, “Oh no. Are they going to try to make me speak in tongues?”
The next leader, the second nun, spoke for five minutes. She pointed to the wall chart to demonstrate how Christians across the ages have responded to God’s grace. “These are patterns, styles, of Christian response to God’s goodness, spiritual disciplines. There’s more than listed here as well as blends, as we each are blended individuals. To name a few”; she pointed to “Activists. People with this gift meet God in their serving others. It’s where they feel called and find themselves empowered. God not only comes to them this way, but God’s love also goes through them to others. Sacramental.” She tapped on the word. “Heavy on Roman Catholic types. We’re drawn and nurtured at the altar, surrounded by the liturgy, and framed by the church year. All of life becomes a sacrament to us, disclosing God in our midst.” She skipped a few to arrive at “Academic. These people, like Father Gabriel,” she indicated the priest beside her, “are inspired by study into the scriptures, faith, and all of life.
“In a sense these spiritual gifts are worldly proof that God loves us all the same,” she said, “because God gives us different gifts.” She smiled and paused. “Isn’t that how we treat our children? We don’t give children the same gifts, do we? Other than hand-me-downs, I mean.” Cody’s nervousness came out with others in a laugh.
The priest, Father Gabriel, a short man with ears that nearly doubled the width of his face, stood to describe the retreat’s approach as “ground up Christianity, our experience of God down here among us where God has joined the neighborhood in Jesus, rented a house just around the block on Capernaum’s First Avenue.” Cody was intrigued if not assured of such an approach to the faith, but he decided to remain through the afternoon session. He was the only person lugging his big Bible.
He’d like to remain standing here in the friendly dark, but he forced himself into the car to complete the long drive home. At least he’d be in silence, which he’d come to view as a companion. What a change: The instruction and permission to be silent before God. Little quoting of the Bible, just reference to Mary and Martha showing two different, maybe inborn divinely granted, ways to respond to Jesus: One busily serving meals, the other at Jesus’ feet. Each gift has its place among God’s people. Without Mary, no worship. But after worship, if no Martha, no dinner.
The experience of the past six days jumbled together in him. It felt like a bundle circulating in his chest, sometimes near his neck, sometimes closer to his stomach. He drove again, setting his cruise control to stop his cyclic speeding and decelerating.
The week was prayer, hours holding oneself open to God without the need either to beg or to praise, just to be within God’s loving and transforming presence. And then the telescope. Father Gabriel brought his computerized tracking six-inch aperture telescope.
“Always bring it on spiritual retreat,” Father Gabriel announced. “I’ll set up outside the refectory after dark every evening. I invite you to come share the heavens with me.” Cody wasn’t first in line, but he was present that first evening. He’d been intrigued with astronomy in high school but never looked through a telescope. With the others, he ooed and aahed. Father Gabriel taught science at a Catholic high school. He recounted how humans discovered that the irregularly moving “stars” were planets and he described how they could be identified, and their paths predicted. The group enjoyed looking into the shadowed moonscape and were thrilled to see what had been called Mars’s canals.
Father Gabriel welcomed Cody every night, his smile making his ears wiggle. Father Gabriel instructed him to spot a particular crater on the moon or a volcano on Mars, then led him, “now at about 9:30, see that darker line?” and he’d tell Cody the name and what astronomers concluded about it. He knew where each spacecraft landed on the moon and Mars, what experiments they performed, and what discoveries they’d made. He pointed the telescope to where the two Voyager spacecraft fled the solar system. Cody learned that our solar system is getting larger faster, that the universe could hold ten trillion galaxes, and that it is 13.82 billion years old, not a mere 13.7. During his days of prayer Cody often saw the image of Mars or the moon before him. He was being lifted out of his usual world. He felt as though life had expanded.
He texted Grace everyday about the people and the place and received her news that she was feeling better and praying for him. Now as the miles clicked by, his uneasiness grew about explaining to Grace. How could he reproduce for her what he’d seen and felt, what he’d thought and wondered about, and how his orientation in life and faith had shifted. He caught himself when his thinking led to worry. He wasn’t going to allow anxiety about the future destroy God’s new link with him. He didn’t know what he’d tell Grace or how, but for now he stopped his car a last time. The road offered a safe shoulder with a wide view over a broken canyon wall toward a red quarter moon slipping into the horizon.
Beside the car he looked up, took a breath as deeply as his lungs allowed, and expressed, beyond words, “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
Preaching point: The heavens above help open us to heaven in our midst.
* * *
Leaving? Father And Mother
by David O. Bales
Genesis 2:18-24
After 34 years if Lawrence hadn’t accepted himself as peculiar, at least he’d gotten used to it. He never fit in at his school. He’d grown up understanding himself as different than others. His parents weren’t like other parents. They were off by themselves, scorning the sins of their neighbors, always pointing him to the signs of the approaching end of the world, and instructing him in Christ’s separation of the sheep from the goats.
It was his joy with Patty that now incited his head-on charge into the convictions that surrounded his parents like a prison wall. He’d been so happy, wary, but happy to tell them. He’d heard their opinion of doomed “mixed marriages”; but he hoped, foolishly so, that they’d trust him or at least want him to be happy. He also was encouraged by Patty’s parents. She’d taken him to dinner at their home a week before. “You’ll like them,” she said. “They’ve always been there for me. And,” she said with a sly smile, “I’ve told them about you.” His joy with Patty and his relief at meeting her parents—being surrounded by their kindness and concern—bolstered him to break the news to his parents.
Surely his parents realized what was coming. All he talked about these days was Patty. He and Patty had been inseparable for seven months, since Patty had backed into his car in the Safeway parking lot and waited, shaking, close to tears, to inform him and hand him her insurance card. When Lawrence first mentioned Patty to his parents, they’d asked, almost in unison, “Has she been saved?”
He needed an entire hour of the evening’s visit to work up his courage and speak his memorized statement. Dinner was nearly over when he pushed aside the half-eaten pork chop on his plate, laid down his fork and, with head bowed, spoke to the table, “Patty and I are going to marry.”
His father seemed prepared. He threw up his arms, “Absolutely not. We cannot abide a mixed marriage. I forbid it.” His father gave his undebatable instructions with eyebrows narrowed. If Lawrence were to paint a portrait of his father, that would be the expression onto the canvas.
Lawrence said, “It’s just that she’s never been around Christians. She’s a really good person, and she’s interested in Jesus.” His shoulders slumped as they always did when he spoke with his father. He managed to peep, “We’re soulmates.”
His mother rose from her chair moaning, “Ooooh,” and sobbed her way to the bedroom.
His father pointed to the ceiling as he spoke what Lawrence hoped would be the last word, “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?” That was not, however, his father’s last word. “When Jesus returns, you’ll be so ashamed. Before all, you’ll have to put away your pagan wife as Ezra commanded.” Lawrence turned to leave, and his father spoke as though a recorded tornado warning, “We will never condone such a marriage.”
Lawrence rushed from his parents’ home, relieved that, no matter how much Patty wanted to be with him, he’d persuaded her that telling them alone was best. Yet now he wasn’t sure about getting married. He’d promised to drive to her apartment when he left his parents. After ten minutes he realized he was on the freeway greatly exceeding the speed limit. He drove off at Exit 23 and into a Denny’s parking lot.
He sat with the streetlight’s amber filtering through his car window. He tried to exercise the pros and cons that he’d been taught at work to employ before making an important decision. This became his prayer. But his mind was as unruly as a frantic dog wearing a path beside its fence. No, that’s not it. You wait until a path is worn before creating a sidewalk. No, that’s not it either. His thinking had fuzzied and flipped again. For an hour he exhausted himself, replaying what his father said as his mother wailed in the bedroom.
He struggled to place the problem on a level footing, to shove to the side all the extraneous details, to focus on what was vital. Lawrence was intelligent enough to know he was an odd duck. No girlfriends in high school. None at work. 34 years old and never a girlfriend! Patty wasn’t perfect. But she loved him. Her parents were kind. He and Patty shared so many interests. They’d begun finishing each other’s sentences.
His father had hauled out scripture to justify his parents’ disapproval. Lawrence had lived with the Bible all his life, memorized lots of it. Now all that came to mind was Genesis, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife.” In Lawrence’s case it seemed more that his father and mother had left him.
Preaching point: Marriage is (almost, almost, almost always) good.
(2 Corinthians 6:10. Ezra chapters 9 and 10.)
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 3, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
