Perfect Sleeper Protection
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV, Cycle B
Perfect Sleeper Protection
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. (vv. 11-15)
In 1998, eighteen-month-old Jonathan Waldick and his four-year-old sister, Destiny, lived with Shirley Driver on Fair Oaks Avenue, a block outside the Kissimmee, Florida, city limits. Driver, 68, is their great-grandmother. She is raising them because of family problems.
Soon after bedtime one February night, tornadoes came roaring through. Destiny and Driver were asleep in one bedroom of the wood-frame house. Jonathan was alone in another bedroom.
Driver said, "I heard the wind roar. We just got slammed. I knew it was a tornado. I grabbed Destiny. The walls were going. The roof came off."
The tornado did its destructive deed and passed, though the wind still howled and rain still came in great gusty torrents. Driver stood amid her crumbled house. She still held Destiny very, very tightly, but young Jonathan was missing.
Driver howled, "I've got to find Jonathan. I've got to find Jonathan. Somebody help me."
Driver looked for Jonathan, even though she wasn't wearing shoes. She didn't care if she cut her feet as long as she found him. But she couldn't find him.
A few neighbors arrived, including Steven Vernelson. Finally, after a frantic, thirty-minute search, Steven saw just this little foot in a five-foot high clump of debris fifty feet away from the house. He was cocooned in his Perfect Sleeper mattress, still resting on his purple striped sheet. He didn't move. They thought he was dead.
Then, he wiggled his foot. Driver shouted, "He's alive! He's alive!"
Jonathan emerged from his vault of debris with two scratches on his scalp and two tiny welts on his chin. Jonathan was fine, but Driver spent the night in the hospital with heart palpitations.
A day later, Driver returned to her home. She saw the devastation for the first time following the destruction. The house wasn't recognizable. She saw the spot where Jonathan was found. As her eyes watered, Driver said, "Oh, my gosh. Jonathan lived through that."
Other relatives and even some strangers also made pilgrimages to visit the site. The mattress and the sheet were still there, against the tree trunk, nearly invisible, deep within the mound of wallboard and furniture and tree limbs and a wrecked Ford Thunderbird. That anyone could be injected so deeply into the rubble seemed astonishing.
Driver's sister Janice Gassert said, "I think God has something planned for this boy. I really believe there's a special plan."
A few feet away, one of Driver's old phonograph records sat atop the wreckage, left there by the wind. It was a recording by the Raker Evangelistic Party, a gospel group. The first song on the album was called, "Oh Lord, You've Been So Good To Me."
The Lord is good. Jesus, of course, knew this better than anyone. As he is about to leave his disciples who will soon begin to lead the ministry he has started, Jesus prays for them. He asks God to protect them -- to keep them safe like they were cocooned in a Perfect Sleeper mattress. Jesus had something planned for these disciples, so he prayed for their souls to be guarded. He prayed for the disciples to work as one and discover God's joy.
The Son of God, who came to save the world, prays for you and me. He prays for our safety. He prays for a Perfect Sleeper protection for our souls. Then, Jesus sends us out to carry on that same ministry so that we, too, will find that same joy.
(Details taken from a February 25, 1998 story in the Spokesman-Review.)
And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. (vv. 11-15)
In 1998, eighteen-month-old Jonathan Waldick and his four-year-old sister, Destiny, lived with Shirley Driver on Fair Oaks Avenue, a block outside the Kissimmee, Florida, city limits. Driver, 68, is their great-grandmother. She is raising them because of family problems.
Soon after bedtime one February night, tornadoes came roaring through. Destiny and Driver were asleep in one bedroom of the wood-frame house. Jonathan was alone in another bedroom.
Driver said, "I heard the wind roar. We just got slammed. I knew it was a tornado. I grabbed Destiny. The walls were going. The roof came off."
The tornado did its destructive deed and passed, though the wind still howled and rain still came in great gusty torrents. Driver stood amid her crumbled house. She still held Destiny very, very tightly, but young Jonathan was missing.
Driver howled, "I've got to find Jonathan. I've got to find Jonathan. Somebody help me."
Driver looked for Jonathan, even though she wasn't wearing shoes. She didn't care if she cut her feet as long as she found him. But she couldn't find him.
A few neighbors arrived, including Steven Vernelson. Finally, after a frantic, thirty-minute search, Steven saw just this little foot in a five-foot high clump of debris fifty feet away from the house. He was cocooned in his Perfect Sleeper mattress, still resting on his purple striped sheet. He didn't move. They thought he was dead.
Then, he wiggled his foot. Driver shouted, "He's alive! He's alive!"
Jonathan emerged from his vault of debris with two scratches on his scalp and two tiny welts on his chin. Jonathan was fine, but Driver spent the night in the hospital with heart palpitations.
A day later, Driver returned to her home. She saw the devastation for the first time following the destruction. The house wasn't recognizable. She saw the spot where Jonathan was found. As her eyes watered, Driver said, "Oh, my gosh. Jonathan lived through that."
Other relatives and even some strangers also made pilgrimages to visit the site. The mattress and the sheet were still there, against the tree trunk, nearly invisible, deep within the mound of wallboard and furniture and tree limbs and a wrecked Ford Thunderbird. That anyone could be injected so deeply into the rubble seemed astonishing.
Driver's sister Janice Gassert said, "I think God has something planned for this boy. I really believe there's a special plan."
A few feet away, one of Driver's old phonograph records sat atop the wreckage, left there by the wind. It was a recording by the Raker Evangelistic Party, a gospel group. The first song on the album was called, "Oh Lord, You've Been So Good To Me."
The Lord is good. Jesus, of course, knew this better than anyone. As he is about to leave his disciples who will soon begin to lead the ministry he has started, Jesus prays for them. He asks God to protect them -- to keep them safe like they were cocooned in a Perfect Sleeper mattress. Jesus had something planned for these disciples, so he prayed for their souls to be guarded. He prayed for the disciples to work as one and discover God's joy.
The Son of God, who came to save the world, prays for you and me. He prays for our safety. He prays for a Perfect Sleeper protection for our souls. Then, Jesus sends us out to carry on that same ministry so that we, too, will find that same joy.
(Details taken from a February 25, 1998 story in the Spokesman-Review.)
