Glory
Stories
What's Up This Week
Today let's remember the glory and wisdom of God. We all need to live our lives for God and to remember, no matter what the consequence, he will always be there. God is going to let us live our lives and no matter what we choose to do, he will always be patiently waiting for us when we return to him. We need to always be ready to share our faith. Just a little bit of guidance can move someone to believe in and love God. Always remember to share your faith. You never know when it will make a difference in someone's life.
Good Stories
Glory
by Stan Purdum
"The heavens are telling the glory of God..."
Psalm 19:1
I can't be sure, of course, but I think I was about 10 years old when the sensation first came to me.
We lived at the time in a second-floor apartment that had a large glassed-in back porch. During the summer months, my brothers and I moved our beds out to the porch and slept there.
It was on one of those summer evenings as the sun was setting with a spectacular blaze that I entered the porch and was overtaken by the sensation. Like any kid, I went to my parents and said, "Can I keep it? I promise to take care of it." They smiled in an understanding way, but said that it wasn't possible.
Yet the sensation kept returning that summer. I began playing with it and feeding it. Once that summer, I even found the sensation with me while sitting around the campfire at church camp. "What are you doing here?" I asked.
When I got home, I went around to our neighbors. I asked, "Are you missing a sensation?" They all said no, but a few admitted to having seen it around the neighborhood. So despite what my parents had said, I decided to secretly keep it, and I named it "Glory."
For a while that summer, I took Glory with me many places, but as time passed -- and as things are in a kid's life -- my attention was eventually attracted to other things. I started neglecting Glory, and although it stayed around and I was occasionally aware of it, I lost the appreciation for Glory that I'd had at the first.
That situation continued while I grew to manhood. Glory sort of hovered in the background, and now and then I'd hear someone mention that they'd seen Glory, but I didn't think much about it.
Others too, though, must have tried to keep Glory as their own, and once in a while I'd discover that somebody had renamed it. Over the years, in fact, Glory was given several names: Majesty, Radiance, Grandeur, and Beauty. One fellow, a theologian, even named the sensation Shekinah. I had to look that one up; it means something like "the glow of God's presence." But I liked the name I'd chosen best: Glory.
Daily life had a way of distracting attention from Glory, but I never totally lost sight of it. When I became a pastor, I preached a sermon about Glory. It seemed appropriate; after all, Glory is a theological word. I explained to my congregation that Glory is the outward shining of God's inner being, sort of like the "clothing" God wears that reveals rather than hides his splendor. I even read them Frederick Buechner's little definition that "Glory is what God looks like when for the time being, all you have to look at him with is a pair of eyes."
The congregation listened politely to all I said, and when I was done, some commented, "Good thoughts, Pastor," but I was struck that I had only told them about Glory. I hadn't enabled them to experience Glory.
While reading the Bible, I discovered that while working on that sermon was that Glory was much older than I had thought, for I'd used as a text a verse from Psalm 19 where the psalmist said, "The heavens are telling the glory of God." Why those words were written more than 3,000 years ago, so Glory was at least that old!
Now that got my interest up, so I turned back to the beginning of the Bible and read there about the creation of the world. At the very end of the first chapter of Genesis I found these words: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." That didn't mention Glory by name, but by then I knew enough about Glory that I recognized its presence in the words, "it was very good."
So Glory is as old as the world itself.
Yet for being so old, Glory had surprising vigor. It kept showing up in all sorts of hard-to-reach places. Once, while backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, I huffed and puffed up a long and twisting trail to reach the top of a high mountain. From the crest, there was a tremendous view, taking in a whole series of purpled mountains against a brilliant blue sky. And there was Glory! It had been waiting for me at the top. I was out of breath; Glory wasn't even breathing hard.
But Glory had a habit of showing up in places where I'd distinctly told it not to come. When I leaving the house to drive my wife to the hospital where she was to deliver our first child, Glory wanted to come along. I said no, however. They were finally allowing fathers in the delivery room, but I didn't think they'd tolerate a crowd.
I was exciting for me, of course, to watch my baby being born, and as I gazed on my little red and wrinkled son, I was suddenly aware that somehow, Glory had managed to slip into the delivery room anyway. "Glory," I said. "What are you doing here? Are you trying to get me into trouble?"
"Oh no, don't worry," Glory said. "I'm always present when children are born. The doctors and nurses have gotten so used to my being here that they don't often think about me anymore. But they'd miss me if I didn't show up at each birth."
I was really surprised, because up until then, I didn't even know that Glory could talk! I should have, though, because I'd read in the 19th Psalm that Glory's "voice goes out through all the earth," and Glory's "words to the end of the world."
After that, I got so I kind of expected Glory to show up more frequently, but its appearances were not predictable. I was asked to give the invocation at an awards banquet where some high and mighty people were being recognized; I thought sure Glory would be there. But though I looked and looked, Glory was nowhere to be found. I saw Pride and Ego, but not Glory.
Nor did Glory show up at the dedication of an impressive office building that had been built on the site of a former apartment house that had housed some poor folks. Greed came, but not Glory.
Once Glory went with me when I was visiting a spectacular cathedral. Glory was very active when the mighty organ played. The pastor started the service, but about half way through, a small child began to cry. The pastor said, "Take that child out of here. We can't have all that noise." The embarrassed parents hurried out with the child... and Glory left at the same time.
Since then, I've seen Glory in many, many places, but I've also come upon people who have lost their ability to see Glory. I met a man who had been a Christian but who had turned away from the faith, not all a once, but gradually. The zeal he once felt had melted away. His springs of living water had slowly dried up. His life had flattened out, become dull, and his faith had become a hollow, meaningless thing. Nothing dramatic really. There was no great crisis. The man had simply stopped noticing Glory, and stopped listening to its words that "go out through all the earth."
As a child, I'd asked my parents if I could keep Glory, and they had said it wasn't possible. At the time, I thought they were just refusing me permission. But now I understand that they were saying exactly what they meant. It isn't possible for anyone to keep Glory. Glory comes and goes as it wishes. Besides that, I also now understand that Glory belongs to God anyway, but that God shares Glory with us.
A young family began attending our church a while ago ? a husband, wife, and two children. They soon became active in the congregation. One day, after they'd been attending for about a year, I received a phone call from the husband, John. While at work, his wife, Karla, had suddenly keeled over and lapsed into unconsciousness. She was now hospitalized. I hurried to the hospital to be with John, and found that Karla was in coma.
Karla remained in that state for several weeks, and when she finally emerged, she was unable to talk and had suffered a paralysis of much of her body. She was eventually moved to a rehabilitation center and slowly, very slowly, she began to recover. Right before I left town for a week's vacation that year, Karla, whose mind was unaffected, was beginning to communicate by means of a special computer.
When I returned a week later, there was an urgent message from John waiting. During the week, Karla had had a sudden stroke and had died.
Of course, I immediately drove over to see John, but on the way I felt a sense of heaviness, of tragedy. It seemed so senseless. After all that the family had been through and the hope that had been growing over the long months as Karla had seemed to be recovering, it now all seemed such a waste. There were now two motherless children and a widowed husband. It was sad beyond any words I had to say.
When I pulled into their driveway, John came out to meet me, but the first thing he said was, "Didn't you bring Glory?"
Glory? Now? During a time of grief?
No, I hadn't. I had not even thought about Glory since receiving the news.
Then, all at once, I understood. If we ever lose God's Glory, we will have lost everything, for Glory is what prevents life from being an endless blur of meaninglessness or hopelessness. God's Glory is what lifts us out of the depths of despair and takes us to the heights of appreciation. God's Glory reassures us that God is good and that his mercy is everlasting. Glory reminds us that God's love comes to us fresh each day like the rising of the sun. And Glory is God's love that blesses us with a benediction like the blaze of sunset when we come to the end of our life's day.
"The heavens," the psalmist said, "are telling God's Glory...."
They are telling it for us.
The style of this story was inspired by a piece by Fred Craddock, titled "Doxology," in As One Without Authority (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981).
"Glory" reprinted with permission from Proclaim, May 12, 2002 (Parish Publishing LLC, P.O. Box 1561, New Canaan, CT 06840) www.parishpublishing.org.
Stan Purdum is the pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Waynesburg, Ohio. He has served as the editor for the preaching journals Emphasis and Homiletics, and he has written extensively for both the religious and secular press. Purdum is the author of New Mercies I See (CSS) and He Walked in Galilee (Abingdon Press), as well as two accounts of his long-distance bicycle journeys, Roll Around Heaven All Day and Playing in Traffic.
Mother knows best
by C. David McKirachan
Proverbs 1:20-33
I was five, absolutely convinced that my mother's unwillingness to budge on some long forgotten issue was an injustice far exceeding reason or justice. So I packed a suitcase, a small one. When I announced my grievances and my intention to leave forever, she asked if she could pack me a lunch and told me not to forget a sweater.
Parenthood is just like being wisdom, crying in the gate. Knowing that the idiots to whom you cry will ignore you, justifying themselves in spite of all the evidence against them. And depend on them adding insult to the wounds they inflict by blaming you for not keeping them out of trouble. You begin to wonder how the human race has survived. Children should have self-destructed long ago just after driving parents crazy.
The terrible mistake we make is trying to keep our sweet young maniacs from suffering the consequences of their follies. You see wisdom is more circumspect. She cuts her losses and turns her back on them. They've had their chance, now it's time to pay. I have such a hard time with consequences. Watching my kids suffer is hard work. I want them happy and unencumbered by the scar tissue left from foolishness and heartbreak.
But like it or not it's how a good part of learning occurs. So wisdom continues to cry, to identify the pitfalls and misery we are cultivating. But I have a feeling even after she gives up and backs away from our train wrecks she watches, wringing her hands, hoping we, her foolish children will be able to learn from our self-inflicted wounds that there are better ways of living than our head strong, self-centered, irresponsible, stingy, materialistic, dominating, vengeful, fearful, violent, insensitive, arrogant, wasteful, and ignorant normality.
I trundled off, suitcase, sandwiches, and sweater in hand. I went to my "secret" place, stayed long enough to consume the sandwiches and sufficiently punish my mother. I made what I thought was a grand entrance, expecting weeping and pleading never to leave again. I got, "Oh, hi. Wash you hands, dinner's ready." I was devastated. I never left again.
Years later, my own kids driving me nuts, she asked me if I remembered the day I "ran away." She told me she'd followed me down the block and watched me. Getting home before I did involved some running but she'd made it and been there to be nonchalant. She said it was all she could do to not give me exactly what I wanted, a tearful homecoming. But what good would that have done me?
Yup, wisdom is a woman. And she's waiting for us to come home.
Pintel and Gudgeon
by C. David McKirachan
James 3:1-12
I sail. That two word sentence is totally inadequate to encompass such an incredible experience. Partnership with the wind and the sea cannot be put down in a sentence. It demands poetry, or silence.
As one learns to sail there is a plethora of minutia to ingest and digest. The parts of the sails, rigging, the boat, the points of sail, commands, procedures, knots, navigation markers, chart notations... and the list goes on. As I learned, I came to two bits of hardware that have to do with rudders. They have the unique names of Pintels and Gudgeons. These bits of metal hold the rudder to the boat while allowing it to swivel. As soon as I heard these lovely monikers I decided to name a pair of cats after them.
The thing that amazed me about them was that these comparatively tiny bits have so much to do with making the whole production work.
James isn't my favorite epistular writer. He's like one of those uncles who insists on talking about investing money and baseball at weddings and funerals alike. James is a tough guy. Grace is one of those pinko ideas that makes no sense to Uncle James. The really troublesome thing is that too often he's right on the mark. He knows what he's talking about. It may not be poetry, but a lot of what he says is true.
James is like pintels and gudgeons. They are very unromantic, unattractive bits of hardware, but they carry a lot of weight and though they don't do any moving, they allow the poetry of wind and sea and sail to work.
Maybe James was a sailor, one of those old guys who says almost nothing, whose eyes see out beyond the horizon. I like to think he understood, even if he wasn't very poetic. He knew that you had to take care of the hardware. He rarely stopped sanding and varnishing and shining the bright work. His lines were always coiled. Such discipline is difficult and it isn't the only way to run a ship, but it brings up hard lessons that we'd miss without his example.
So I'm glad he included this thing about the rudder. I'll read the letter of straw a bit differently from now on.
I wonder what he named his boat.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. Two of his books, I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder, have been published by Westminster John Knox Press. McKirachan was raised in a pastor's home and he is the brother of a pastor, and he has discovered his name indicates that he has druid roots. Storytelling seems to be a congenital disorder. He lives with his 21-year-old son Ben and his dog Sam.
Scrap Pile
Sharing One's Faith
By Constance Berg
"Jesus said to them, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.' "
Mark 8:34
One of the greatest joys for believers is that chance to share our faith with each other and others. The following is part of a testimony given by Kathy Bohl, an RN from Belle Fourche, South Dakota, to a group of representatives from Gideons International:
"I was baptized at the age of twelve, but I didn't fully understand the implications. It was just the thing to do. I asked Jesus into my heart later one night in my bedroom. I didn't make that step of faith public, and over the next ten years just about everything else became more important than God. Even though I let go of him, he held onto me.
"After a couple of years out of nursing school, I joined the Traveling Nurse Corps and on the first plane out I rededicated my life and my career to God. Having grown up in a tiny town in rural Pennsylvania, I wanted my first assignment to be in a big city, so I requested Portland, Phoenix, or Boston. When the Nurse Corps called, they asked, 'How about Colorado?' They assured me it would only be for one month. That assignment turned out to be permanent.
"I worked in the Intensive Care Unit in Cortez. Geographically, it is located in southwest Colorado, the only hospital for 100 miles in some directions. The town borders the Ute and Navajo Indian reservations. There is a lot of Peyote religion and Satan worship in the area.
"But there is a very strong Christian community as well. It was not uncommon for one side of the family to be Peyote where the medicine man would pray. The Christian side of the family would go over and pray together over the patient as well. A very sweet sound to me was the American Indians praying and singing in their native language and hearing, so plainly in every few words, the name of Jesus.
"Just the presence of the Gideon Bibles in the bedside stands and the prayers that went with them meant spiritual warfare in the unit. There were many times when I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit or the power of Satan as he fought to take lives there. I wasn't the only one. Other Christian nurses often felt the same things.
"Once I had spent a day taking care of a very ill, elderly Ute Indian gentleman. He didn't speak any English but was very restless and obviously distraught. On his windowsill, I found a fan made of eagle feathers, so I asked his family what it was. They said they brought it in because he had been hearing the evil spirits calling him; because he was afraid he was going to die, the fan was there to wave away the evil spirits! A traveling nurse, a very charismatic Christian, came to relieve me after I had taken care of him. Before I could say anything to her, she said, 'You know what? Last night when I went in to take care of him, I felt my hair stand on end, and I had to pray before I could go near him!'
"One patient I shared my testimony with was Mr. B. He had chronic lung disease and because of it would retain CO2 to life-threatening levels. He would get so sick, come into ICU, and be put on a ventilator until his levels would drop. Then he could go home for a couple of days. He had to do this several times and each time was a very miserable experience. It's really a nightmare for the patient when this occurs.
"One time he had had it. He was refusing to be put on the ventilator and told his nurse he wanted to die. I agreed to talk to him. When I went into his room, I found him sitting up in his bed breathing very fast and looking very ill. He was still coherent, so I began to talk to him about the seriousness of his illness. Then I asked him if he knew where he would go when he died. He said, 'I'm not worried about that. I've been a good man all my life. I raised good kids and was a good husband.' We talked and I read to him the gospel from the Bible.
"A very short time later his nurse found me again and this time she was very excited. She exclaimed, 'Mr. B said he's healed!' I ran with her, rather doubtingly, back to his room. Sure enough, he was sitting up on the bed looking very animated and he told me the same thing. 'I know God healed me! I had this feeling come into the top of my head and down through my body and out of my feet, and I know I'm healed!'
"We had the blood gases done early and, sure enough, his CO2 level had dropped from 80 to 35! It was most definitely a miracle. Shortly after that, the doctor taking care of him came in. He is a Christian and the nurse and I were so excited we were both talking at once, telling him the story. He just smiled as if he already knew. I'm sure he had been praying for him.
"Mr. B's family arrived and, after sharing the story with them, we found out that they were Christian and had called out-of-town family members. We had all been praying for him at the exact time he was healed! We were so overpowered by the presence of the Holy Spirit that night and that he had allowed us to be a part of that, we could hardly function. God gave us so many people to share with that night. We prayed and praised God together."
(Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, Series II, Cycle B, Constance Berg, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio, 1999.)
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and email the story to us.
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StoryShare, September 17, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
Today let's remember the glory and wisdom of God. We all need to live our lives for God and to remember, no matter what the consequence, he will always be there. God is going to let us live our lives and no matter what we choose to do, he will always be patiently waiting for us when we return to him. We need to always be ready to share our faith. Just a little bit of guidance can move someone to believe in and love God. Always remember to share your faith. You never know when it will make a difference in someone's life.
Good Stories
Glory
by Stan Purdum
"The heavens are telling the glory of God..."
Psalm 19:1
I can't be sure, of course, but I think I was about 10 years old when the sensation first came to me.
We lived at the time in a second-floor apartment that had a large glassed-in back porch. During the summer months, my brothers and I moved our beds out to the porch and slept there.
It was on one of those summer evenings as the sun was setting with a spectacular blaze that I entered the porch and was overtaken by the sensation. Like any kid, I went to my parents and said, "Can I keep it? I promise to take care of it." They smiled in an understanding way, but said that it wasn't possible.
Yet the sensation kept returning that summer. I began playing with it and feeding it. Once that summer, I even found the sensation with me while sitting around the campfire at church camp. "What are you doing here?" I asked.
When I got home, I went around to our neighbors. I asked, "Are you missing a sensation?" They all said no, but a few admitted to having seen it around the neighborhood. So despite what my parents had said, I decided to secretly keep it, and I named it "Glory."
For a while that summer, I took Glory with me many places, but as time passed -- and as things are in a kid's life -- my attention was eventually attracted to other things. I started neglecting Glory, and although it stayed around and I was occasionally aware of it, I lost the appreciation for Glory that I'd had at the first.
That situation continued while I grew to manhood. Glory sort of hovered in the background, and now and then I'd hear someone mention that they'd seen Glory, but I didn't think much about it.
Others too, though, must have tried to keep Glory as their own, and once in a while I'd discover that somebody had renamed it. Over the years, in fact, Glory was given several names: Majesty, Radiance, Grandeur, and Beauty. One fellow, a theologian, even named the sensation Shekinah. I had to look that one up; it means something like "the glow of God's presence." But I liked the name I'd chosen best: Glory.
Daily life had a way of distracting attention from Glory, but I never totally lost sight of it. When I became a pastor, I preached a sermon about Glory. It seemed appropriate; after all, Glory is a theological word. I explained to my congregation that Glory is the outward shining of God's inner being, sort of like the "clothing" God wears that reveals rather than hides his splendor. I even read them Frederick Buechner's little definition that "Glory is what God looks like when for the time being, all you have to look at him with is a pair of eyes."
The congregation listened politely to all I said, and when I was done, some commented, "Good thoughts, Pastor," but I was struck that I had only told them about Glory. I hadn't enabled them to experience Glory.
While reading the Bible, I discovered that while working on that sermon was that Glory was much older than I had thought, for I'd used as a text a verse from Psalm 19 where the psalmist said, "The heavens are telling the glory of God." Why those words were written more than 3,000 years ago, so Glory was at least that old!
Now that got my interest up, so I turned back to the beginning of the Bible and read there about the creation of the world. At the very end of the first chapter of Genesis I found these words: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." That didn't mention Glory by name, but by then I knew enough about Glory that I recognized its presence in the words, "it was very good."
So Glory is as old as the world itself.
Yet for being so old, Glory had surprising vigor. It kept showing up in all sorts of hard-to-reach places. Once, while backpacking on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, I huffed and puffed up a long and twisting trail to reach the top of a high mountain. From the crest, there was a tremendous view, taking in a whole series of purpled mountains against a brilliant blue sky. And there was Glory! It had been waiting for me at the top. I was out of breath; Glory wasn't even breathing hard.
But Glory had a habit of showing up in places where I'd distinctly told it not to come. When I leaving the house to drive my wife to the hospital where she was to deliver our first child, Glory wanted to come along. I said no, however. They were finally allowing fathers in the delivery room, but I didn't think they'd tolerate a crowd.
I was exciting for me, of course, to watch my baby being born, and as I gazed on my little red and wrinkled son, I was suddenly aware that somehow, Glory had managed to slip into the delivery room anyway. "Glory," I said. "What are you doing here? Are you trying to get me into trouble?"
"Oh no, don't worry," Glory said. "I'm always present when children are born. The doctors and nurses have gotten so used to my being here that they don't often think about me anymore. But they'd miss me if I didn't show up at each birth."
I was really surprised, because up until then, I didn't even know that Glory could talk! I should have, though, because I'd read in the 19th Psalm that Glory's "voice goes out through all the earth," and Glory's "words to the end of the world."
After that, I got so I kind of expected Glory to show up more frequently, but its appearances were not predictable. I was asked to give the invocation at an awards banquet where some high and mighty people were being recognized; I thought sure Glory would be there. But though I looked and looked, Glory was nowhere to be found. I saw Pride and Ego, but not Glory.
Nor did Glory show up at the dedication of an impressive office building that had been built on the site of a former apartment house that had housed some poor folks. Greed came, but not Glory.
Once Glory went with me when I was visiting a spectacular cathedral. Glory was very active when the mighty organ played. The pastor started the service, but about half way through, a small child began to cry. The pastor said, "Take that child out of here. We can't have all that noise." The embarrassed parents hurried out with the child... and Glory left at the same time.
Since then, I've seen Glory in many, many places, but I've also come upon people who have lost their ability to see Glory. I met a man who had been a Christian but who had turned away from the faith, not all a once, but gradually. The zeal he once felt had melted away. His springs of living water had slowly dried up. His life had flattened out, become dull, and his faith had become a hollow, meaningless thing. Nothing dramatic really. There was no great crisis. The man had simply stopped noticing Glory, and stopped listening to its words that "go out through all the earth."
As a child, I'd asked my parents if I could keep Glory, and they had said it wasn't possible. At the time, I thought they were just refusing me permission. But now I understand that they were saying exactly what they meant. It isn't possible for anyone to keep Glory. Glory comes and goes as it wishes. Besides that, I also now understand that Glory belongs to God anyway, but that God shares Glory with us.
A young family began attending our church a while ago ? a husband, wife, and two children. They soon became active in the congregation. One day, after they'd been attending for about a year, I received a phone call from the husband, John. While at work, his wife, Karla, had suddenly keeled over and lapsed into unconsciousness. She was now hospitalized. I hurried to the hospital to be with John, and found that Karla was in coma.
Karla remained in that state for several weeks, and when she finally emerged, she was unable to talk and had suffered a paralysis of much of her body. She was eventually moved to a rehabilitation center and slowly, very slowly, she began to recover. Right before I left town for a week's vacation that year, Karla, whose mind was unaffected, was beginning to communicate by means of a special computer.
When I returned a week later, there was an urgent message from John waiting. During the week, Karla had had a sudden stroke and had died.
Of course, I immediately drove over to see John, but on the way I felt a sense of heaviness, of tragedy. It seemed so senseless. After all that the family had been through and the hope that had been growing over the long months as Karla had seemed to be recovering, it now all seemed such a waste. There were now two motherless children and a widowed husband. It was sad beyond any words I had to say.
When I pulled into their driveway, John came out to meet me, but the first thing he said was, "Didn't you bring Glory?"
Glory? Now? During a time of grief?
No, I hadn't. I had not even thought about Glory since receiving the news.
Then, all at once, I understood. If we ever lose God's Glory, we will have lost everything, for Glory is what prevents life from being an endless blur of meaninglessness or hopelessness. God's Glory is what lifts us out of the depths of despair and takes us to the heights of appreciation. God's Glory reassures us that God is good and that his mercy is everlasting. Glory reminds us that God's love comes to us fresh each day like the rising of the sun. And Glory is God's love that blesses us with a benediction like the blaze of sunset when we come to the end of our life's day.
"The heavens," the psalmist said, "are telling God's Glory...."
They are telling it for us.
The style of this story was inspired by a piece by Fred Craddock, titled "Doxology," in As One Without Authority (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981).
"Glory" reprinted with permission from Proclaim, May 12, 2002 (Parish Publishing LLC, P.O. Box 1561, New Canaan, CT 06840) www.parishpublishing.org.
Stan Purdum is the pastor of Centenary United Methodist Church in Waynesburg, Ohio. He has served as the editor for the preaching journals Emphasis and Homiletics, and he has written extensively for both the religious and secular press. Purdum is the author of New Mercies I See (CSS) and He Walked in Galilee (Abingdon Press), as well as two accounts of his long-distance bicycle journeys, Roll Around Heaven All Day and Playing in Traffic.
Mother knows best
by C. David McKirachan
Proverbs 1:20-33
I was five, absolutely convinced that my mother's unwillingness to budge on some long forgotten issue was an injustice far exceeding reason or justice. So I packed a suitcase, a small one. When I announced my grievances and my intention to leave forever, she asked if she could pack me a lunch and told me not to forget a sweater.
Parenthood is just like being wisdom, crying in the gate. Knowing that the idiots to whom you cry will ignore you, justifying themselves in spite of all the evidence against them. And depend on them adding insult to the wounds they inflict by blaming you for not keeping them out of trouble. You begin to wonder how the human race has survived. Children should have self-destructed long ago just after driving parents crazy.
The terrible mistake we make is trying to keep our sweet young maniacs from suffering the consequences of their follies. You see wisdom is more circumspect. She cuts her losses and turns her back on them. They've had their chance, now it's time to pay. I have such a hard time with consequences. Watching my kids suffer is hard work. I want them happy and unencumbered by the scar tissue left from foolishness and heartbreak.
But like it or not it's how a good part of learning occurs. So wisdom continues to cry, to identify the pitfalls and misery we are cultivating. But I have a feeling even after she gives up and backs away from our train wrecks she watches, wringing her hands, hoping we, her foolish children will be able to learn from our self-inflicted wounds that there are better ways of living than our head strong, self-centered, irresponsible, stingy, materialistic, dominating, vengeful, fearful, violent, insensitive, arrogant, wasteful, and ignorant normality.
I trundled off, suitcase, sandwiches, and sweater in hand. I went to my "secret" place, stayed long enough to consume the sandwiches and sufficiently punish my mother. I made what I thought was a grand entrance, expecting weeping and pleading never to leave again. I got, "Oh, hi. Wash you hands, dinner's ready." I was devastated. I never left again.
Years later, my own kids driving me nuts, she asked me if I remembered the day I "ran away." She told me she'd followed me down the block and watched me. Getting home before I did involved some running but she'd made it and been there to be nonchalant. She said it was all she could do to not give me exactly what I wanted, a tearful homecoming. But what good would that have done me?
Yup, wisdom is a woman. And she's waiting for us to come home.
Pintel and Gudgeon
by C. David McKirachan
James 3:1-12
I sail. That two word sentence is totally inadequate to encompass such an incredible experience. Partnership with the wind and the sea cannot be put down in a sentence. It demands poetry, or silence.
As one learns to sail there is a plethora of minutia to ingest and digest. The parts of the sails, rigging, the boat, the points of sail, commands, procedures, knots, navigation markers, chart notations... and the list goes on. As I learned, I came to two bits of hardware that have to do with rudders. They have the unique names of Pintels and Gudgeons. These bits of metal hold the rudder to the boat while allowing it to swivel. As soon as I heard these lovely monikers I decided to name a pair of cats after them.
The thing that amazed me about them was that these comparatively tiny bits have so much to do with making the whole production work.
James isn't my favorite epistular writer. He's like one of those uncles who insists on talking about investing money and baseball at weddings and funerals alike. James is a tough guy. Grace is one of those pinko ideas that makes no sense to Uncle James. The really troublesome thing is that too often he's right on the mark. He knows what he's talking about. It may not be poetry, but a lot of what he says is true.
James is like pintels and gudgeons. They are very unromantic, unattractive bits of hardware, but they carry a lot of weight and though they don't do any moving, they allow the poetry of wind and sea and sail to work.
Maybe James was a sailor, one of those old guys who says almost nothing, whose eyes see out beyond the horizon. I like to think he understood, even if he wasn't very poetic. He knew that you had to take care of the hardware. He rarely stopped sanding and varnishing and shining the bright work. His lines were always coiled. Such discipline is difficult and it isn't the only way to run a ship, but it brings up hard lessons that we'd miss without his example.
So I'm glad he included this thing about the rudder. I'll read the letter of straw a bit differently from now on.
I wonder what he named his boat.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. Two of his books, I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder, have been published by Westminster John Knox Press. McKirachan was raised in a pastor's home and he is the brother of a pastor, and he has discovered his name indicates that he has druid roots. Storytelling seems to be a congenital disorder. He lives with his 21-year-old son Ben and his dog Sam.
Scrap Pile
Sharing One's Faith
By Constance Berg
"Jesus said to them, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.' "
Mark 8:34
One of the greatest joys for believers is that chance to share our faith with each other and others. The following is part of a testimony given by Kathy Bohl, an RN from Belle Fourche, South Dakota, to a group of representatives from Gideons International:
"I was baptized at the age of twelve, but I didn't fully understand the implications. It was just the thing to do. I asked Jesus into my heart later one night in my bedroom. I didn't make that step of faith public, and over the next ten years just about everything else became more important than God. Even though I let go of him, he held onto me.
"After a couple of years out of nursing school, I joined the Traveling Nurse Corps and on the first plane out I rededicated my life and my career to God. Having grown up in a tiny town in rural Pennsylvania, I wanted my first assignment to be in a big city, so I requested Portland, Phoenix, or Boston. When the Nurse Corps called, they asked, 'How about Colorado?' They assured me it would only be for one month. That assignment turned out to be permanent.
"I worked in the Intensive Care Unit in Cortez. Geographically, it is located in southwest Colorado, the only hospital for 100 miles in some directions. The town borders the Ute and Navajo Indian reservations. There is a lot of Peyote religion and Satan worship in the area.
"But there is a very strong Christian community as well. It was not uncommon for one side of the family to be Peyote where the medicine man would pray. The Christian side of the family would go over and pray together over the patient as well. A very sweet sound to me was the American Indians praying and singing in their native language and hearing, so plainly in every few words, the name of Jesus.
"Just the presence of the Gideon Bibles in the bedside stands and the prayers that went with them meant spiritual warfare in the unit. There were many times when I could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit or the power of Satan as he fought to take lives there. I wasn't the only one. Other Christian nurses often felt the same things.
"Once I had spent a day taking care of a very ill, elderly Ute Indian gentleman. He didn't speak any English but was very restless and obviously distraught. On his windowsill, I found a fan made of eagle feathers, so I asked his family what it was. They said they brought it in because he had been hearing the evil spirits calling him; because he was afraid he was going to die, the fan was there to wave away the evil spirits! A traveling nurse, a very charismatic Christian, came to relieve me after I had taken care of him. Before I could say anything to her, she said, 'You know what? Last night when I went in to take care of him, I felt my hair stand on end, and I had to pray before I could go near him!'
"One patient I shared my testimony with was Mr. B. He had chronic lung disease and because of it would retain CO2 to life-threatening levels. He would get so sick, come into ICU, and be put on a ventilator until his levels would drop. Then he could go home for a couple of days. He had to do this several times and each time was a very miserable experience. It's really a nightmare for the patient when this occurs.
"One time he had had it. He was refusing to be put on the ventilator and told his nurse he wanted to die. I agreed to talk to him. When I went into his room, I found him sitting up in his bed breathing very fast and looking very ill. He was still coherent, so I began to talk to him about the seriousness of his illness. Then I asked him if he knew where he would go when he died. He said, 'I'm not worried about that. I've been a good man all my life. I raised good kids and was a good husband.' We talked and I read to him the gospel from the Bible.
"A very short time later his nurse found me again and this time she was very excited. She exclaimed, 'Mr. B said he's healed!' I ran with her, rather doubtingly, back to his room. Sure enough, he was sitting up on the bed looking very animated and he told me the same thing. 'I know God healed me! I had this feeling come into the top of my head and down through my body and out of my feet, and I know I'm healed!'
"We had the blood gases done early and, sure enough, his CO2 level had dropped from 80 to 35! It was most definitely a miracle. Shortly after that, the doctor taking care of him came in. He is a Christian and the nurse and I were so excited we were both talking at once, telling him the story. He just smiled as if he already knew. I'm sure he had been praying for him.
"Mr. B's family arrived and, after sharing the story with them, we found out that they were Christian and had called out-of-town family members. We had all been praying for him at the exact time he was healed! We were so overpowered by the presence of the Holy Spirit that night and that he had allowed us to be a part of that, we could hardly function. God gave us so many people to share with that night. We prayed and praised God together."
(Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, Series II, Cycle B, Constance Berg, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio, 1999.)
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and email the story to us.
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StoryShare, September 17, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
