7 - 7-7-77
Stories
Contents
What's Up This Week
"7 - 7-7-77" by Scott Dalgarno
"Stranger on a Fence Post" by Bonnie Compton Hanson
"The Adoption Paradox" by Timothy F. Merrill
"Beyond Despair" by David E. Leininger
What's Up This Week
The stories in this edition of StoryShare are truly inspirational -- in our featured piece, Scott Dalgarno recounts the stirring story of Harold Abrahams, who became a national hero in 1924, only for his athletic career to come to a sudden halt. The accomplishment that brought him was gradually forgotten... but his story found new life and continues to inspire us today. Bonnie Compton Hanson shares an intriguing account of a stranger who appeared at a moment of great peril, saving her great-grandfather on an icy road. Timothy Merrill muses about the biological counter-intuitiveness of adoption, and tells us that God's spiritual adoption of each one of us is an awe-inspiring paradox. Finally, David Leininger stares into the pit of depression expressed in this week's Psalms -- that deep, dark place in which we wonder "Where is God?" -- and reminds us of the inspiring answer articulated by Horatio Spafford in the depths of gut-wrenching grief.
* * * * * * * * *
7 - 7-7-77
Scott Dalgarno
1 Kings 19:1-18
It might be called a "slam dunk" today. The prophet Elijah faced down Ahab, the king of Israel; his spitfire of a wife, Jezebel; and along with them, 100 prophets of Baal. There on top of Mount Carmel he made fools of them all and showed once and for all who was God in Israel.
And then, wonder of wonders, what can only be called a great depression settled upon the prophet; a "darkness visible" to use the words of the novelist William Styron. Instead of exulting, the prophet slunk off to a cave like an African pachyderm waiting for his end.
The story of such a splendid hero reaching his lofty goal and then crashing shortly after is, yes, hard to understand, but it also happens to be quite common. Here is an account of one such modern hero.
On the seventh day of the seventh month in 1977, at seven in the evening, Englishman Harold Abrahams dined for the last time with his compatriot Arthur Porritt. They had met for dinner at the hour of 7 p.m. on the seventh day of July every year since that lucky date in 1924 when Porritt and Abrahams knelt, nearly shoulder to shoulder, at the beginning of what Abrahams would later call "the loneliest ten seconds of my life."
That day, in Paris, the two managed to bring more honor to England than any two athletes in the island's glorious history. Abrahams won the gold medal in the 100 meters and Porritt took home the bronze. To the joy of every European in attendance, they ran the favored American champion, Charlie Paddock, off his feet. The race was greeted with such joy in England that (along with the success of their teammate Eric Liddell in the 400 meters) they managed to raise the status of track and field on Shakespeare's sceptered isle from a minor to a major sport. Would the Oxfordian Roger Bannister have broken the four-minute mile 30 years later without them? Probably not.
So what caused "the fastest man in the world" to go into such a steep mental decline in the wake of his greatest triumph? Perhaps it was the same thing that drove him so hard to excel. Running wasn't a passion for Harold Abrahams, it was a self-confessed compulsion. Harold Abrahams ran not because he loved to run, but because he hated being Jewish.
More than anything else, he wanted his ethnicity not to matter in an age and country where it mattered way too much. It was as if he always had an asterisk after his name. Even when he met the Prince of Wales after his great victory he felt that he wasn't the gold medalist from England -- he was the Semite medalist. In a word, for Harold Abrahams running was a "weapon," a weapon he could wield against all the self-satisfied English he believed were his true opponents in life. It was anger at them and what he believed they thought of him that fueled him as he tore down that 4 foot x 100 meter strip of real estate that made his name in British athletic history.
It was also that anger that made him do something no British Olympic sprinter in history had ever done -- hire a personal trainer. Sprinters had run forever on heart. Harold Abrahams was the first Englishman to run with his brains. In the 1920 Olympics Abrahams had failed in the quarterfinals of both the 100 and 200 meters. He hadn't come even close. Four years later he was a different kind of runner. His first afternoon at the oval with Sam Mussabini had changed everything. Born in London of Arab, Turkish, French, and Italian ancestry, Mussabini, like Abrahams, was persona non grata with his nation's athletic elite. That made the two all the more a team. They'd show the Cambridge snobs Abrahams went to school with what a champion looked like.
Mussabini was able to spot Abraham's troubles immediately. "You're overstriding," he said. Big strides were fine for distance, but they meant death for the sprinter. That bit of wisdom, along with the advice that Abrahams should focus on the 100 meter race and a sensible training regime were just what the Jewish sprinter needed. That and one more thing: a proper attitude as he peered down the lonely 100 meters.
By the time of the big Olympic day (7 p.m. on July 7, 1924), Abrahams admitted to butterflies -- gargantuan butterflies. A self-confessed neurotic, he said that for four years he'd been so afraid of the thought of losing; now (he could hardly believe it) he found himself just as terrified at the prospect of winning. Mussabini had an answer for that too: "Only think of two things -- the gun and the tape. When you hear the one, just run like hell until you break the other."
And he did. Harold Abrahams won. And after the initial exultation came the plummeting. He had worked so hard. He had dreamed of the moment so very long. He had proved so much, and still, he had come up... empty. Was it simply a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason? No one could say but Harold Abrahams -- and he wasn't talking.
In time he got over it. Marriage to a good woman helped. So did breaking his leg in competition the next year. He had nothing left to prove anyway, and now he could devote himself to the law and a new side career -- sports journalism. The British public adored hearing him on BBC, and they told him so.
Most importantly, once he'd proved himself on the track and made peace with a new life off of it, he began to hear a still small voice -- a voice that told him it was time to make peace with his ethnicity. He had tried hating being Jewish -- that hadn't worked. Why not try embracing it? He did, and in time he became president of the Jewish Athletic Association.
At 7 p.m. in the evening on July 7, 1977 (7-7-77), Harold Abrahams and his friend Arthur Porritt dined together for the last time. They were old men now. They had known what it meant to fly high, and they knew what it meant to come back down to the ground. Abrahams knew what it meant to hit it hard, but he also knew how to bounce. Resilience was the key to happiness -- that and not taking yourself too seriously. He would leave that to others. He was happy to die forgotten. Little did he know that in five years the world would take note of his Olympic triumph in the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire.
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ashland, Oregon. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches Film and Ethics. His poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The Christian Century, America: The National Catholic Weekly, The Antioch Review, and Alive Now.
Stranger on a Fence Post
Bonnie Compton Hanson
Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat."
1 Kings 19:5b
Pulling his coat tight against the bitter wind, the old man stopped at the crest of Blue Bank Hill, near Flemingsburg, Kentucky. Above him, the winter sky pinked with the first blush of dawn: a blush reflected in the snow all around him and in the treacherous ice beneath his feet.
Just in front of him, the road dropped off like a roller coaster -- a roller coaster coated with deadly ice! Beside him, his weary mules chomped at their bits, their warm breath forming instant puffs in the freezing air. Behind them loomed the wagonload of railroad ties they had been pulling ever since four o'clock that morning along twisting, unpaved eastern Kentucky mountain roads. They were ties that he himself had logged and dressed from his own forest, for although he was already 75, Reason ("Reece") Hinton was still as strong and ramrod-straight as a man half his age.
But was he strong enough to make it down that hill without losing his load, his mules, or even his own life? If only he had known about this ice when he left home! Then he could have asked one of his sons or grandsons to come along -- though they probably would have had the sense not to in such weather. Unfortunately, Reece Hinton was a stubborn man, to his usual regret. But somehow God always managed to come through to help him out of all of his difficulties.
For instance, when he was very small, his beloved mother Clarinda had died. But God had brought a new mother into his life, who he had come to love just as deeply. Then, after he was grown and married, and the children came one after another -- eight in all -- his wife Laura Belle was always in poor health. Then he himself became so ill that the doctor feared for his life. "Dear God," he had prayed then, "please let me live long enough to raise all of these little ones. If you do, I will serve you with my whole life."
God answered that prayer beyond all expectation. Indeed, Reece hadn't been sick a day since. In gratitude, he vowed to spend his life learning the scriptures and praising God. Eventually he committed whole chapters of the Bible to memory. He also used the beautiful voice God had given him to sing God's praises everywhere he went, including hymns he composed himself.
Even as he stood in his current predicament, "O God,Our Help in Ages Past" burst into his mind, begging to be sung. But he needed every ounce of energy possible to keep his wagon from careening out of control on the way down that hill. Not enough brake action could cause a wild (and possibly deadly) plunge; too much could lock the wheels, jerking them sideways and pitching those heavy logs forward onto his helpless mules.
Still praying, he spoke encouragingly to the protesting animals, then clicked the reins. As they lunged, he jerked the wooden brake stick back and forth to maintain control. Inch by inch, they moved forward. Then, suddenly, the wagon began gaining momentum while the mules fought in vain for footing on the glass-slick ice.
Desperate now, Reece fought with the brake, his fingers almost frozen from the cold and the effort. But between the ice and the downslope, and with the rapidly increasing speed, he was quickly losing the battle.
"Dear God!" he prayed out loud, "if you're going to help me, please do it quick!"
"Hey there, mister, could you-all use an extra hand?"
Jerking around, Reece saw a farmer sitting on a fence post beside the road. Not even stopping to wonder why anyone would be out there this bitterly cold morning, Reece yelled back, "Sure could, son."
In a moment the stranger had reached him. "Can't blame you. This hill is almost impossible when it's iced up like this. Headed into town?"
"Right. Got to deliver this load of ties. Sure glad to see a friendly face."
Reece expected the man to help with the reins up front, or to pull back on the wagon from behind. Instead, the stranger just put his hand on the wagon's side and walked companionably alongside it in the snow. But something remarkable happened. Instantly the mules stopped sliding; the wagon stopped skidding. They could have been traveling on flat ground!
The two men continued talking about mules and lumber and things of the Lord all the way down the hill. At the bottom, the stranger said, "Well, guess I'd better go now."
The old man reached for his new friend's hand. "You'll never know how much I've appreciated your help, son. You-all from around here? Sorry, I didn't get your name. You know how us old men forget to..." He stopped. There was no one there. Now that all the danger was past, the stranger had simply vanished into thin air.
As soon as he returned home to his farm in Muses Mills late that night, Reece told his daughter Alice and his granddaughter Ruby about this wonderful stranger. And he continued to talk about him until his death at 80, insisting that God had sent a Heavenly Being to help him that bitter, icy morning.
My great-grandpa never stopped thanking God for it, either!
Bonnie Compton Hanson is the author of the "Ponytail Girls" books for girls, plus other books, poems, stories, and articles, including stories in three "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books.
The Adoption Paradox
Timothy F. Merrill
...for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
Galatians 3:26
My oldest daughter is adopted.
I rarely confide this information. Not because I am embarrassed, or because she might be embarrassed. It's just useless information. I rarely even think of her as adopted. She's my daughter. Period. End of story.
I was reading a Christian writer the other day, and she began a chapter by telling a story about her son, "who," she added, "is adopted." I expected the story to be about some facet of the child's adoption, or some medical crisis that had arisen because he had different genetic material than his adoptive parents. But there was none of this. The information was totally gratuitous.
An article in the January 2001 issue of Discover magazine has a fascinating account of adoption -- in animals. Humans are not the only species that occasionally adopts its offspring. Birds do it and fish do it, as well as other animals. Sometimes the adoption even crosses species. And those of you who know anything about the origins of Rome know that Romulus and Remus were fed, protected, and nurtured by a very intuitive wolf!
The piece in Discover goes on to discuss adoption as a counter-intuitive practice. It makes no sense at all from a Darwinian, evolutionary perspective. Why on earth would a human, or fish, or fowl, waste time taking care of someone else's genes?
That's why I'm so astonished when I think about biblical statements that refer to me as a "child of God." Here I am, a person in whom -- one would think -- resides very little divine genetic material, and yet God loves me, nurtures me, protects me, and feeds me as though I were one of his very own.
Ontologically oxymoronic.
Yet -- and here is the paradox of spiritual adoption -- by God's grace, I am of God, of God's nature, of God's wisdom and power. I am not God, any more than my daughter is me. But I am of God -- as counter-intuitive as that may seem!
Timothy F. Merrill is the Senior Editor of the preaching journal Homiletics. He has published numerous articles in the religious press and in academic journals, and he is the author of Learning to Fall: A Guide for the Spiritually Clumsy (Chalice Press). Merrill is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who has served churches in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon. This piece appears in the CSS volume Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series IV, Cycle C).
Beyond Despair
David E. Leininger
Psalms 42 & 43
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" I'll tell you why -- it's a depressing world out there. You pick up a paper or turn on the evening news and encounter death, disaster, pain, misery, despair. Whether the stories are of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, outsourcing of jobs overseas, daily obituary notices, or those private, personal stories that never come to public attention, life can be a burden.
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" Three times in these two psalms (and scholars say that the two psalms should be taken together because of their similar language and themes -- the division is artificial) we find those questions. It is the lament of someone who is cut off from the Temple. Why? Exile? Illness? Who can say? It doesn't matter... the message is the same: "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?" The poet's "thirst for God" is more than simply a desire because, as we well know, we do not live without water. For the psalmist, God is a necessity of life. But at the moment, communion with God is unavailable.
Ever felt that way? Most of us have. The grief is exacerbated by the taunts of "Where is your God?" -- which in the psalm comes from external sources, but in our lives is a question that may well have passed from our own lips. In the midst of death, disaster, pain, misery, despair... where are you, God?
What makes the moment all the more painful for the psalmist is the memory of days when the opposite was true. He recalls a time when he was not alone, but was part of a crowd on its way to experience God's intimate nearness in the Jerusalem temple. "These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival." This is not the memory of a sleepy Sunday morning appearance at 8:30 or 11:00; this is the ecstatic day you were presented to the congregation following confirmation classes, the day your child was baptized, the snowy Christmas Eve communion that warmed you to your depths, that Easter morning when the truth of the resurrection became so real to you that reunion with a lost husband or wife or mother or father was almost close enough to reach out and touch. The psalmist recalls times when his sense of the divine presence was so immediate and full that he felt as if he were beholding nothing less than the face of God.
But that was then, this is now. Now all that he hears is the sound of his own pain -- "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me? As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me." And there are those relentless taunts again: "Where is your God?"
But then, from the depths of the tortured psyche something wells up, and the rhetorical question "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" is answered: "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God." Three times in these few verses, not only is the question repeated, so is the answer. Despair and hope coexist. They did in Jesus -- we heard it in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). The message is simple enough: even though the day's news may be depressing, at the end of the day what gets us beyond despair is the fact that the day's news is not the end of the story. It was not for Jesus; it is not for you and me.
Horatio G. Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer who lost most of his wealth in the financial crisis of 1873. He sent his wife and four daughters on a trip to France, but on the way their ship was struck by another and sank. Of 225 passengers, only 87 of them survived. Mrs. Spafford was among the survivors, but the four daughters perished. As soon as she reached land, she telegraphed to her husband: "Saved alone. Children lost. What shall I do?"
Spafford left for France to join his wife and return her to Chicago. In the depth of his bereavement, he wrote something that keeps his name alive -- a hymn (his one and only):
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" Move beyond despair. "Hope in God..."
David E. Leininger is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Warren, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series VI, Cycle A) and A Color-Blind Church, his account of the intriguing match of two congregations -- one black, one white -- in a small community following the reunion of the northern and southern streams of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983.
**********************************************
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.
**************
StoryShare, June 24, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 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.
What's Up This Week
"7 - 7-7-77" by Scott Dalgarno
"Stranger on a Fence Post" by Bonnie Compton Hanson
"The Adoption Paradox" by Timothy F. Merrill
"Beyond Despair" by David E. Leininger
What's Up This Week
The stories in this edition of StoryShare are truly inspirational -- in our featured piece, Scott Dalgarno recounts the stirring story of Harold Abrahams, who became a national hero in 1924, only for his athletic career to come to a sudden halt. The accomplishment that brought him was gradually forgotten... but his story found new life and continues to inspire us today. Bonnie Compton Hanson shares an intriguing account of a stranger who appeared at a moment of great peril, saving her great-grandfather on an icy road. Timothy Merrill muses about the biological counter-intuitiveness of adoption, and tells us that God's spiritual adoption of each one of us is an awe-inspiring paradox. Finally, David Leininger stares into the pit of depression expressed in this week's Psalms -- that deep, dark place in which we wonder "Where is God?" -- and reminds us of the inspiring answer articulated by Horatio Spafford in the depths of gut-wrenching grief.
* * * * * * * * *
7 - 7-7-77
Scott Dalgarno
1 Kings 19:1-18
It might be called a "slam dunk" today. The prophet Elijah faced down Ahab, the king of Israel; his spitfire of a wife, Jezebel; and along with them, 100 prophets of Baal. There on top of Mount Carmel he made fools of them all and showed once and for all who was God in Israel.
And then, wonder of wonders, what can only be called a great depression settled upon the prophet; a "darkness visible" to use the words of the novelist William Styron. Instead of exulting, the prophet slunk off to a cave like an African pachyderm waiting for his end.
The story of such a splendid hero reaching his lofty goal and then crashing shortly after is, yes, hard to understand, but it also happens to be quite common. Here is an account of one such modern hero.
On the seventh day of the seventh month in 1977, at seven in the evening, Englishman Harold Abrahams dined for the last time with his compatriot Arthur Porritt. They had met for dinner at the hour of 7 p.m. on the seventh day of July every year since that lucky date in 1924 when Porritt and Abrahams knelt, nearly shoulder to shoulder, at the beginning of what Abrahams would later call "the loneliest ten seconds of my life."
That day, in Paris, the two managed to bring more honor to England than any two athletes in the island's glorious history. Abrahams won the gold medal in the 100 meters and Porritt took home the bronze. To the joy of every European in attendance, they ran the favored American champion, Charlie Paddock, off his feet. The race was greeted with such joy in England that (along with the success of their teammate Eric Liddell in the 400 meters) they managed to raise the status of track and field on Shakespeare's sceptered isle from a minor to a major sport. Would the Oxfordian Roger Bannister have broken the four-minute mile 30 years later without them? Probably not.
So what caused "the fastest man in the world" to go into such a steep mental decline in the wake of his greatest triumph? Perhaps it was the same thing that drove him so hard to excel. Running wasn't a passion for Harold Abrahams, it was a self-confessed compulsion. Harold Abrahams ran not because he loved to run, but because he hated being Jewish.
More than anything else, he wanted his ethnicity not to matter in an age and country where it mattered way too much. It was as if he always had an asterisk after his name. Even when he met the Prince of Wales after his great victory he felt that he wasn't the gold medalist from England -- he was the Semite medalist. In a word, for Harold Abrahams running was a "weapon," a weapon he could wield against all the self-satisfied English he believed were his true opponents in life. It was anger at them and what he believed they thought of him that fueled him as he tore down that 4 foot x 100 meter strip of real estate that made his name in British athletic history.
It was also that anger that made him do something no British Olympic sprinter in history had ever done -- hire a personal trainer. Sprinters had run forever on heart. Harold Abrahams was the first Englishman to run with his brains. In the 1920 Olympics Abrahams had failed in the quarterfinals of both the 100 and 200 meters. He hadn't come even close. Four years later he was a different kind of runner. His first afternoon at the oval with Sam Mussabini had changed everything. Born in London of Arab, Turkish, French, and Italian ancestry, Mussabini, like Abrahams, was persona non grata with his nation's athletic elite. That made the two all the more a team. They'd show the Cambridge snobs Abrahams went to school with what a champion looked like.
Mussabini was able to spot Abraham's troubles immediately. "You're overstriding," he said. Big strides were fine for distance, but they meant death for the sprinter. That bit of wisdom, along with the advice that Abrahams should focus on the 100 meter race and a sensible training regime were just what the Jewish sprinter needed. That and one more thing: a proper attitude as he peered down the lonely 100 meters.
By the time of the big Olympic day (7 p.m. on July 7, 1924), Abrahams admitted to butterflies -- gargantuan butterflies. A self-confessed neurotic, he said that for four years he'd been so afraid of the thought of losing; now (he could hardly believe it) he found himself just as terrified at the prospect of winning. Mussabini had an answer for that too: "Only think of two things -- the gun and the tape. When you hear the one, just run like hell until you break the other."
And he did. Harold Abrahams won. And after the initial exultation came the plummeting. He had worked so hard. He had dreamed of the moment so very long. He had proved so much, and still, he had come up... empty. Was it simply a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason? No one could say but Harold Abrahams -- and he wasn't talking.
In time he got over it. Marriage to a good woman helped. So did breaking his leg in competition the next year. He had nothing left to prove anyway, and now he could devote himself to the law and a new side career -- sports journalism. The British public adored hearing him on BBC, and they told him so.
Most importantly, once he'd proved himself on the track and made peace with a new life off of it, he began to hear a still small voice -- a voice that told him it was time to make peace with his ethnicity. He had tried hating being Jewish -- that hadn't worked. Why not try embracing it? He did, and in time he became president of the Jewish Athletic Association.
At 7 p.m. in the evening on July 7, 1977 (7-7-77), Harold Abrahams and his friend Arthur Porritt dined together for the last time. They were old men now. They had known what it meant to fly high, and they knew what it meant to come back down to the ground. Abrahams knew what it meant to hit it hard, but he also knew how to bounce. Resilience was the key to happiness -- that and not taking yourself too seriously. He would leave that to others. He was happy to die forgotten. Little did he know that in five years the world would take note of his Olympic triumph in the Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire.
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ashland, Oregon. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches Film and Ethics. His poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The Christian Century, America: The National Catholic Weekly, The Antioch Review, and Alive Now.
Stranger on a Fence Post
Bonnie Compton Hanson
Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, "Get up and eat."
1 Kings 19:5b
Pulling his coat tight against the bitter wind, the old man stopped at the crest of Blue Bank Hill, near Flemingsburg, Kentucky. Above him, the winter sky pinked with the first blush of dawn: a blush reflected in the snow all around him and in the treacherous ice beneath his feet.
Just in front of him, the road dropped off like a roller coaster -- a roller coaster coated with deadly ice! Beside him, his weary mules chomped at their bits, their warm breath forming instant puffs in the freezing air. Behind them loomed the wagonload of railroad ties they had been pulling ever since four o'clock that morning along twisting, unpaved eastern Kentucky mountain roads. They were ties that he himself had logged and dressed from his own forest, for although he was already 75, Reason ("Reece") Hinton was still as strong and ramrod-straight as a man half his age.
But was he strong enough to make it down that hill without losing his load, his mules, or even his own life? If only he had known about this ice when he left home! Then he could have asked one of his sons or grandsons to come along -- though they probably would have had the sense not to in such weather. Unfortunately, Reece Hinton was a stubborn man, to his usual regret. But somehow God always managed to come through to help him out of all of his difficulties.
For instance, when he was very small, his beloved mother Clarinda had died. But God had brought a new mother into his life, who he had come to love just as deeply. Then, after he was grown and married, and the children came one after another -- eight in all -- his wife Laura Belle was always in poor health. Then he himself became so ill that the doctor feared for his life. "Dear God," he had prayed then, "please let me live long enough to raise all of these little ones. If you do, I will serve you with my whole life."
God answered that prayer beyond all expectation. Indeed, Reece hadn't been sick a day since. In gratitude, he vowed to spend his life learning the scriptures and praising God. Eventually he committed whole chapters of the Bible to memory. He also used the beautiful voice God had given him to sing God's praises everywhere he went, including hymns he composed himself.
Even as he stood in his current predicament, "O God,Our Help in Ages Past" burst into his mind, begging to be sung. But he needed every ounce of energy possible to keep his wagon from careening out of control on the way down that hill. Not enough brake action could cause a wild (and possibly deadly) plunge; too much could lock the wheels, jerking them sideways and pitching those heavy logs forward onto his helpless mules.
Still praying, he spoke encouragingly to the protesting animals, then clicked the reins. As they lunged, he jerked the wooden brake stick back and forth to maintain control. Inch by inch, they moved forward. Then, suddenly, the wagon began gaining momentum while the mules fought in vain for footing on the glass-slick ice.
Desperate now, Reece fought with the brake, his fingers almost frozen from the cold and the effort. But between the ice and the downslope, and with the rapidly increasing speed, he was quickly losing the battle.
"Dear God!" he prayed out loud, "if you're going to help me, please do it quick!"
"Hey there, mister, could you-all use an extra hand?"
Jerking around, Reece saw a farmer sitting on a fence post beside the road. Not even stopping to wonder why anyone would be out there this bitterly cold morning, Reece yelled back, "Sure could, son."
In a moment the stranger had reached him. "Can't blame you. This hill is almost impossible when it's iced up like this. Headed into town?"
"Right. Got to deliver this load of ties. Sure glad to see a friendly face."
Reece expected the man to help with the reins up front, or to pull back on the wagon from behind. Instead, the stranger just put his hand on the wagon's side and walked companionably alongside it in the snow. But something remarkable happened. Instantly the mules stopped sliding; the wagon stopped skidding. They could have been traveling on flat ground!
The two men continued talking about mules and lumber and things of the Lord all the way down the hill. At the bottom, the stranger said, "Well, guess I'd better go now."
The old man reached for his new friend's hand. "You'll never know how much I've appreciated your help, son. You-all from around here? Sorry, I didn't get your name. You know how us old men forget to..." He stopped. There was no one there. Now that all the danger was past, the stranger had simply vanished into thin air.
As soon as he returned home to his farm in Muses Mills late that night, Reece told his daughter Alice and his granddaughter Ruby about this wonderful stranger. And he continued to talk about him until his death at 80, insisting that God had sent a Heavenly Being to help him that bitter, icy morning.
My great-grandpa never stopped thanking God for it, either!
Bonnie Compton Hanson is the author of the "Ponytail Girls" books for girls, plus other books, poems, stories, and articles, including stories in three "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books.
The Adoption Paradox
Timothy F. Merrill
...for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
Galatians 3:26
My oldest daughter is adopted.
I rarely confide this information. Not because I am embarrassed, or because she might be embarrassed. It's just useless information. I rarely even think of her as adopted. She's my daughter. Period. End of story.
I was reading a Christian writer the other day, and she began a chapter by telling a story about her son, "who," she added, "is adopted." I expected the story to be about some facet of the child's adoption, or some medical crisis that had arisen because he had different genetic material than his adoptive parents. But there was none of this. The information was totally gratuitous.
An article in the January 2001 issue of Discover magazine has a fascinating account of adoption -- in animals. Humans are not the only species that occasionally adopts its offspring. Birds do it and fish do it, as well as other animals. Sometimes the adoption even crosses species. And those of you who know anything about the origins of Rome know that Romulus and Remus were fed, protected, and nurtured by a very intuitive wolf!
The piece in Discover goes on to discuss adoption as a counter-intuitive practice. It makes no sense at all from a Darwinian, evolutionary perspective. Why on earth would a human, or fish, or fowl, waste time taking care of someone else's genes?
That's why I'm so astonished when I think about biblical statements that refer to me as a "child of God." Here I am, a person in whom -- one would think -- resides very little divine genetic material, and yet God loves me, nurtures me, protects me, and feeds me as though I were one of his very own.
Ontologically oxymoronic.
Yet -- and here is the paradox of spiritual adoption -- by God's grace, I am of God, of God's nature, of God's wisdom and power. I am not God, any more than my daughter is me. But I am of God -- as counter-intuitive as that may seem!
Timothy F. Merrill is the Senior Editor of the preaching journal Homiletics. He has published numerous articles in the religious press and in academic journals, and he is the author of Learning to Fall: A Guide for the Spiritually Clumsy (Chalice Press). Merrill is an ordained United Church of Christ minister who has served churches in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon. This piece appears in the CSS volume Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series IV, Cycle C).
Beyond Despair
David E. Leininger
Psalms 42 & 43
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" I'll tell you why -- it's a depressing world out there. You pick up a paper or turn on the evening news and encounter death, disaster, pain, misery, despair. Whether the stories are of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, outsourcing of jobs overseas, daily obituary notices, or those private, personal stories that never come to public attention, life can be a burden.
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" Three times in these two psalms (and scholars say that the two psalms should be taken together because of their similar language and themes -- the division is artificial) we find those questions. It is the lament of someone who is cut off from the Temple. Why? Exile? Illness? Who can say? It doesn't matter... the message is the same: "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?" The poet's "thirst for God" is more than simply a desire because, as we well know, we do not live without water. For the psalmist, God is a necessity of life. But at the moment, communion with God is unavailable.
Ever felt that way? Most of us have. The grief is exacerbated by the taunts of "Where is your God?" -- which in the psalm comes from external sources, but in our lives is a question that may well have passed from our own lips. In the midst of death, disaster, pain, misery, despair... where are you, God?
What makes the moment all the more painful for the psalmist is the memory of days when the opposite was true. He recalls a time when he was not alone, but was part of a crowd on its way to experience God's intimate nearness in the Jerusalem temple. "These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival." This is not the memory of a sleepy Sunday morning appearance at 8:30 or 11:00; this is the ecstatic day you were presented to the congregation following confirmation classes, the day your child was baptized, the snowy Christmas Eve communion that warmed you to your depths, that Easter morning when the truth of the resurrection became so real to you that reunion with a lost husband or wife or mother or father was almost close enough to reach out and touch. The psalmist recalls times when his sense of the divine presence was so immediate and full that he felt as if he were beholding nothing less than the face of God.
But that was then, this is now. Now all that he hears is the sound of his own pain -- "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me? As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me." And there are those relentless taunts again: "Where is your God?"
But then, from the depths of the tortured psyche something wells up, and the rhetorical question "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" is answered: "Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God." Three times in these few verses, not only is the question repeated, so is the answer. Despair and hope coexist. They did in Jesus -- we heard it in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39). The message is simple enough: even though the day's news may be depressing, at the end of the day what gets us beyond despair is the fact that the day's news is not the end of the story. It was not for Jesus; it is not for you and me.
Horatio G. Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer who lost most of his wealth in the financial crisis of 1873. He sent his wife and four daughters on a trip to France, but on the way their ship was struck by another and sank. Of 225 passengers, only 87 of them survived. Mrs. Spafford was among the survivors, but the four daughters perished. As soon as she reached land, she telegraphed to her husband: "Saved alone. Children lost. What shall I do?"
Spafford left for France to join his wife and return her to Chicago. In the depth of his bereavement, he wrote something that keeps his name alive -- a hymn (his one and only):
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."
"Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?" Move beyond despair. "Hope in God..."
David E. Leininger is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Warren, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series VI, Cycle A) and A Color-Blind Church, his account of the intriguing match of two congregations -- one black, one white -- in a small community following the reunion of the northern and southern streams of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983.
**********************************************
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.
**************
StoryShare, June 24, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 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.
