Arrogance
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Arrogance"
Shining Moments: "You Don't Depend on People" by Larry Winebrenner
Good Stories: "The Church Leader and the Drug Dealer" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "A Sinner?" by Steven Dykstra
What's Up This Week
Not many of us want to identify with the arrogant religious leader in this week's parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Who among us would ever pray in such a presumptuous, self-aggrandizing way? But then, not many of us care to identify with the tax collector either. We confess to being sinners, but prefer to think of ourselves as a higher class of sinner than someone as low as a despised tax collector (a good modern-day equivalent would be a drug dealer or a pimp). In what way, then, is this our story? See John's retelling of the parable in Good Stories, and psychologist Steven Dykstra's reflections on "sin" in the Scrap Pile.
Steve tells about an inner-city kid, born into an environment of poverty and crime, who by the age of 12 has given up all hope of a better life: "...he had spent his young life struggling upstream against a terrible current... as though he had been born into a river, and everywhere he wanted to go lay in the opposite direction from where the current was trying to take him."
A Story to Live By
Arrogance
"The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' "
Luke 18:11-12
A crowded United Airlines flight was canceled. A single agent was rebooking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I have to be on this flight, and it has to be first class." The agent replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "Do you have any idea who I am?" Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. "May I have your attention, please?" she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 who does not know who he is. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."
**************
While visiting the Beethoven museum in Bonn, a young American student was fascinated by the piano on which the great composer had composed some of his masterpieces. She asked a guard if she might play a few notes on the piano. She gave the guard a generous tip, and the guard gave permission. The student played the first few bars of the "Moonlight" sonata. As she left, she said to the guard, "I imagine all the great pianists who come here want to play on that piano." The guard said, "Well, Paderewski was here a few years ago, and he said he wasn't worthy to touch it."
Shining Moments
You Don't Depend on People
by Larry Winebrenner
When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions. Happy are those whom you choose and bring to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.
Psalm 65:3-4
Names and places in the following account have been changed to protect the guilty.
Sadie was a schoolteacher in Smalltown, Wisconsin, about 50 years ago. She attended Smalltown Methodist Church. Her home sat just outside the town limits.
In the county were a dozen or so one-room schools, and several more that had multiple classes meeting together. It was Sadie's dream to consolidate the schools in the county to provide better resources for the educational process. Most of her neighbors, however, loved their little local one-room schools and were not very helpful in her drive to consolidate. Sadie was indefatigable, and she worked with county school boards and anyone who would listen to her dream. Eventually she was successful, and a large, well-equipped consolidated school was built in Smalltown, much to the chagrin of those who opposed it.
One night Sadie's house caught fire. She tried to douse the flames, but the fire got out of control. The Smalltown Volunteer Fire Department responded to a call made by one of Sadie's neighbors. The fire truck drove right up to the town limits of Smalltown and stopped some 20 feet away from the house. Instead of going to work extinguishing the fire, these good volunteer fire department church people sat on the hood of their truck and watched the house burn.
Sadie went from person to person in the crowd, pleading, "Everything I own is in that house. Please help me save it. At least help me get some of my things out of the house."
The good church people watching the fire said things like, "Why don't you ask the school board to help you?" and "Neighbors help neighbors, but you didn't think about that when you were bent and determined on consolidating our schools." They watched her house burn to the ground, then left her standing beside the smoking ruins in her nightgown as they returned to their homes.
But there's more to the story. Sadie did not move away. She was in church the following Sunday in her regular place. She continued to attend church there and taught school in Smalltown. She retired from teaching when she was 70 years old, and the school had a great celebration honoring her as the founder of their school. When she was 75 years old, the church gave her a testimonial as one of the church pillars. She was still active at the age of 86, when I served the church there. She told me this story (confirmed by several church members) and said, "You don't depend on people in life. You simply seek God's help, and He will provide."
Larry Winebrenner is professor emeritus at Miami-Dade Community College, following 33 years of teaching. He served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin, retiring after 13 years as pastor of York Memorial United Methodist Church in Miami. He still serves as chaplain of Epworth Village Retirement Community in Hialeah, Florida. Larry has authored two college textbooks, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
Good Stories
The Church Leader and the Drug Dealer
by John Sumwalt
"But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
Luke 18:13-14
(Tell this story to those who trust in their own righteousness and despise others.)
Two people, one a church leader and the other a drug dealer, went into a church to pray. The church leader prayed thus with himself: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people -- welfare cheats, pornographers, or even like this drug dealer. I go to worship every Sunday, I give a tenth of my salary and my time to the church, and I spend two weeks of my vacation every summer building homes for the poor." But the drug dealer, sitting far back in the sanctuary, would not even look up toward the altar, but wrung his hands and said, "God, forgive me, I am a sinner." I tell you, the drug dealer went home justified rather than the church leader; for all who hold themselves up will fall, and those who admit their shortcomings will be lifted up.
Scrap Pile
A Sinner?
by Steven Dykstra
"The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector'... But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' "
Luke 18:11, 13
As a child psychologist, I have the privilege of meeting and speaking with a great many people. I work with children, adolescents, and their parents, but it is almost always some adult who has decided the child or teenager should see me. It is rarely the minor's initiative. And because of where I have chosen to work, most of my clients are not only forced to see me, they are usually black as well. That is no small issue, given that I am white and solidly suburban in lifestyle. I am not, nor have I ever been, poor. Since I work in urban hospitals and county mental centers, the vast majority of my clients are impoverished. In short, I am as different from my clients as I could possibly be, and I have tried to use that to my advantage whenever I could. As I inform them and enlighten them, I am aware that they will also inform and enlighten me. The street runs two ways, and I hope they will feel some equity in the arrangement, and therefore be more comfortable with it. I, with some ten years of college, have learned a lot from children and teenagers.
In the summer of 1990, a young man came to see me, sent by his probation officer, and he taught me a great deal. I will never forget him, or others like him. They haunt me. Strangely, I do not remember his name. He was 16 or so, and after that one appointment he never came back. But for that one morning he tolerated me. He sat in my office and answered my questions. He was big and tough and black. He wore a long coat, even though it was summer, and I think he had a gun under it. He rode to my office hidden under a blanket in the back of a car because my place was in an unfriendly neighborhood. If the wrong people saw him, they would try to kill him. He was a felon, and his probation officer told him he had to see me. In the interest of a lenient sentence, he complied. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do for him, but I was willing to meet him and hear his story.
He lumbered into my office, and his huge body filled the small chair to overflowing. He was well over 6 feet tall and looked to weigh about 250 pounds. I, a neatly dressed professional, and he, the apparent epitome of a black thug, made quite a pair. We struck up our conversation, and within the first few minutes he revealed to me that he wanted to be a drug dealer; he wanted to make a lot of easy money -- he wanted to be rich. For the next half-hour, our conversation was like a contest: two boxers circling, feeling for weaknesses and strengths. He answered as I expected, and I asked just what I was supposed to ask. Nothing of any import was revealed. But for some strange reason that I do not understand, though it has happened again since, we slowly dropped our guard. As more than an hour passed, we almost forgot who we were. The walls slid down, and his spirit was revealed.
I repeated an earlier question and asked this new person before me what he wanted to be in life, what he wanted to do: what were his hopes and his dreams? This hulking man-child, armed and hidden behind shades, leaned back in his seat, tilted his head, held his arms out and up in the way people do when they make a plea, and cried, "I want to be a doctor. I've always wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember." Tears rolled out from under his sunglasses and down his cheeks and etched themselves into my mind.
"Yeah," I said, not at all meaning what I was about to say, "that's a good job. Doctors make a lot of money." He shot straight up and screamed out loud when he heard my words. The tears poured down his face and his body heaved in that way people do when they cry uncontrollably, like they can't get air. He reacted as though my words had stabbed him.
"That ain't it!" he bellowed. "Doctors help people. I wanna help people. But now that ain't gonna happen. I'm never gonna be a doctor, not anymore." He truly believed, at 16, that his dreams were dead. As we talked, I came to know that he had decided by the age of 12 that he could never become a doctor: that no one would let him be a physician after all the trouble he had been in.
I know now that he had spent his young life struggling upstream against a terrible current... as though he had been born into a river, and everywhere he wanted to go lay in the opposite direction from where the current was trying to take him. At that moment, when he was 12, he let go his grip and slipped off into the current. It washed him so far downstream, so fast, that I am certain his dreams were lost in the distance before that day was over. Though he was smart enough, and once good enough, he could not hang on against the pressure of the current. The river had not killed him yet, but it had hollowed him out, and now life beat his hollow body for a drum.
As I reflect on things, I can see that my life has largely been an effortless drift within a different current. It's as though, at my birth, I was set into a different river, and I have been carried along by the flow of that stream ever since. I drifted through the turns and eddies, confident that the river would carry me to not one but many satisfying points and destinations. Any minor snag was rectified with little effort. A small push and I was on my way again. I had absolute faith that the river would be kind, that my best interests would be served. The current held achievement and success for me. All I had to do was drift.
How different my life has been from that young man's, and others like him. If you are young and black, and especially if you are poor as well, you will be born into a river where the current is not your friend. It carries you to places you do not want to go, and away from places you desperately long to visit. To reach your goals, your destinations, you must struggle against the current. You must swim and kick and claw against unrelenting forces directed away from your dreams. For so many, the current is not their friend but their enemy. As it pushes against their bodies and tears at their souls, it also whispers in their ears and begs them to give up.
Many do give up. They let go their handholds and set themselves into the river. They relax and wash downstream as their dreams sink below the vanishing horizon behind them. As they rest, freed from the struggle, it is their dreams that drown first, long before their bodies. The distance to their goals grows vast, and they remake themselves in a new image. They take on the goals of the murderous current. They deceive themselves in the name of rest and embrace certain doom as though it was their true destination all along. They pretend they want to go to the only place the current will take them. My young friend let go when he was 12 -- some last longer, others do not.
Steven Dykstra is a child psychologist with the Milwaukee County Child and Adolescent Treatment Center. He is an advanced certified lay speaker and teaches a Disciple Bible class at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This personal story and reflection appeared under the title "Surely Goodness And Mercy..." in Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B (CSS Publishing Company, 1996).
**********************************************
New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Jodie Felton, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. Click on the title above for information about how to order. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A, which begins in December.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
**************
StoryShare, October 24, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Arrogance"
Shining Moments: "You Don't Depend on People" by Larry Winebrenner
Good Stories: "The Church Leader and the Drug Dealer" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "A Sinner?" by Steven Dykstra
What's Up This Week
Not many of us want to identify with the arrogant religious leader in this week's parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Who among us would ever pray in such a presumptuous, self-aggrandizing way? But then, not many of us care to identify with the tax collector either. We confess to being sinners, but prefer to think of ourselves as a higher class of sinner than someone as low as a despised tax collector (a good modern-day equivalent would be a drug dealer or a pimp). In what way, then, is this our story? See John's retelling of the parable in Good Stories, and psychologist Steven Dykstra's reflections on "sin" in the Scrap Pile.
Steve tells about an inner-city kid, born into an environment of poverty and crime, who by the age of 12 has given up all hope of a better life: "...he had spent his young life struggling upstream against a terrible current... as though he had been born into a river, and everywhere he wanted to go lay in the opposite direction from where the current was trying to take him."
A Story to Live By
Arrogance
"The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' "
Luke 18:11-12
A crowded United Airlines flight was canceled. A single agent was rebooking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said, "I have to be on this flight, and it has to be first class." The agent replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first, and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out." The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, "Do you have any idea who I am?" Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. "May I have your attention, please?" she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at Gate 14 who does not know who he is. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Gate 14."
**************
While visiting the Beethoven museum in Bonn, a young American student was fascinated by the piano on which the great composer had composed some of his masterpieces. She asked a guard if she might play a few notes on the piano. She gave the guard a generous tip, and the guard gave permission. The student played the first few bars of the "Moonlight" sonata. As she left, she said to the guard, "I imagine all the great pianists who come here want to play on that piano." The guard said, "Well, Paderewski was here a few years ago, and he said he wasn't worthy to touch it."
Shining Moments
You Don't Depend on People
by Larry Winebrenner
When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions. Happy are those whom you choose and bring to live in your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.
Psalm 65:3-4
Names and places in the following account have been changed to protect the guilty.
Sadie was a schoolteacher in Smalltown, Wisconsin, about 50 years ago. She attended Smalltown Methodist Church. Her home sat just outside the town limits.
In the county were a dozen or so one-room schools, and several more that had multiple classes meeting together. It was Sadie's dream to consolidate the schools in the county to provide better resources for the educational process. Most of her neighbors, however, loved their little local one-room schools and were not very helpful in her drive to consolidate. Sadie was indefatigable, and she worked with county school boards and anyone who would listen to her dream. Eventually she was successful, and a large, well-equipped consolidated school was built in Smalltown, much to the chagrin of those who opposed it.
One night Sadie's house caught fire. She tried to douse the flames, but the fire got out of control. The Smalltown Volunteer Fire Department responded to a call made by one of Sadie's neighbors. The fire truck drove right up to the town limits of Smalltown and stopped some 20 feet away from the house. Instead of going to work extinguishing the fire, these good volunteer fire department church people sat on the hood of their truck and watched the house burn.
Sadie went from person to person in the crowd, pleading, "Everything I own is in that house. Please help me save it. At least help me get some of my things out of the house."
The good church people watching the fire said things like, "Why don't you ask the school board to help you?" and "Neighbors help neighbors, but you didn't think about that when you were bent and determined on consolidating our schools." They watched her house burn to the ground, then left her standing beside the smoking ruins in her nightgown as they returned to their homes.
But there's more to the story. Sadie did not move away. She was in church the following Sunday in her regular place. She continued to attend church there and taught school in Smalltown. She retired from teaching when she was 70 years old, and the school had a great celebration honoring her as the founder of their school. When she was 75 years old, the church gave her a testimonial as one of the church pillars. She was still active at the age of 86, when I served the church there. She told me this story (confirmed by several church members) and said, "You don't depend on people in life. You simply seek God's help, and He will provide."
Larry Winebrenner is professor emeritus at Miami-Dade Community College, following 33 years of teaching. He served as pastor of churches in Georgia, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin, retiring after 13 years as pastor of York Memorial United Methodist Church in Miami. He still serves as chaplain of Epworth Village Retirement Community in Hialeah, Florida. Larry has authored two college textbooks, served as an editor for three newspapers and an academic journal, and contributed articles to several magazines.
Good Stories
The Church Leader and the Drug Dealer
by John Sumwalt
"But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."
Luke 18:13-14
(Tell this story to those who trust in their own righteousness and despise others.)
Two people, one a church leader and the other a drug dealer, went into a church to pray. The church leader prayed thus with himself: "God, I thank you that I am not like other people -- welfare cheats, pornographers, or even like this drug dealer. I go to worship every Sunday, I give a tenth of my salary and my time to the church, and I spend two weeks of my vacation every summer building homes for the poor." But the drug dealer, sitting far back in the sanctuary, would not even look up toward the altar, but wrung his hands and said, "God, forgive me, I am a sinner." I tell you, the drug dealer went home justified rather than the church leader; for all who hold themselves up will fall, and those who admit their shortcomings will be lifted up.
Scrap Pile
A Sinner?
by Steven Dykstra
"The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people; thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector'... But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' "
Luke 18:11, 13
As a child psychologist, I have the privilege of meeting and speaking with a great many people. I work with children, adolescents, and their parents, but it is almost always some adult who has decided the child or teenager should see me. It is rarely the minor's initiative. And because of where I have chosen to work, most of my clients are not only forced to see me, they are usually black as well. That is no small issue, given that I am white and solidly suburban in lifestyle. I am not, nor have I ever been, poor. Since I work in urban hospitals and county mental centers, the vast majority of my clients are impoverished. In short, I am as different from my clients as I could possibly be, and I have tried to use that to my advantage whenever I could. As I inform them and enlighten them, I am aware that they will also inform and enlighten me. The street runs two ways, and I hope they will feel some equity in the arrangement, and therefore be more comfortable with it. I, with some ten years of college, have learned a lot from children and teenagers.
In the summer of 1990, a young man came to see me, sent by his probation officer, and he taught me a great deal. I will never forget him, or others like him. They haunt me. Strangely, I do not remember his name. He was 16 or so, and after that one appointment he never came back. But for that one morning he tolerated me. He sat in my office and answered my questions. He was big and tough and black. He wore a long coat, even though it was summer, and I think he had a gun under it. He rode to my office hidden under a blanket in the back of a car because my place was in an unfriendly neighborhood. If the wrong people saw him, they would try to kill him. He was a felon, and his probation officer told him he had to see me. In the interest of a lenient sentence, he complied. I'm not sure what I was supposed to do for him, but I was willing to meet him and hear his story.
He lumbered into my office, and his huge body filled the small chair to overflowing. He was well over 6 feet tall and looked to weigh about 250 pounds. I, a neatly dressed professional, and he, the apparent epitome of a black thug, made quite a pair. We struck up our conversation, and within the first few minutes he revealed to me that he wanted to be a drug dealer; he wanted to make a lot of easy money -- he wanted to be rich. For the next half-hour, our conversation was like a contest: two boxers circling, feeling for weaknesses and strengths. He answered as I expected, and I asked just what I was supposed to ask. Nothing of any import was revealed. But for some strange reason that I do not understand, though it has happened again since, we slowly dropped our guard. As more than an hour passed, we almost forgot who we were. The walls slid down, and his spirit was revealed.
I repeated an earlier question and asked this new person before me what he wanted to be in life, what he wanted to do: what were his hopes and his dreams? This hulking man-child, armed and hidden behind shades, leaned back in his seat, tilted his head, held his arms out and up in the way people do when they make a plea, and cried, "I want to be a doctor. I've always wanted to be a doctor for as long as I can remember." Tears rolled out from under his sunglasses and down his cheeks and etched themselves into my mind.
"Yeah," I said, not at all meaning what I was about to say, "that's a good job. Doctors make a lot of money." He shot straight up and screamed out loud when he heard my words. The tears poured down his face and his body heaved in that way people do when they cry uncontrollably, like they can't get air. He reacted as though my words had stabbed him.
"That ain't it!" he bellowed. "Doctors help people. I wanna help people. But now that ain't gonna happen. I'm never gonna be a doctor, not anymore." He truly believed, at 16, that his dreams were dead. As we talked, I came to know that he had decided by the age of 12 that he could never become a doctor: that no one would let him be a physician after all the trouble he had been in.
I know now that he had spent his young life struggling upstream against a terrible current... as though he had been born into a river, and everywhere he wanted to go lay in the opposite direction from where the current was trying to take him. At that moment, when he was 12, he let go his grip and slipped off into the current. It washed him so far downstream, so fast, that I am certain his dreams were lost in the distance before that day was over. Though he was smart enough, and once good enough, he could not hang on against the pressure of the current. The river had not killed him yet, but it had hollowed him out, and now life beat his hollow body for a drum.
As I reflect on things, I can see that my life has largely been an effortless drift within a different current. It's as though, at my birth, I was set into a different river, and I have been carried along by the flow of that stream ever since. I drifted through the turns and eddies, confident that the river would carry me to not one but many satisfying points and destinations. Any minor snag was rectified with little effort. A small push and I was on my way again. I had absolute faith that the river would be kind, that my best interests would be served. The current held achievement and success for me. All I had to do was drift.
How different my life has been from that young man's, and others like him. If you are young and black, and especially if you are poor as well, you will be born into a river where the current is not your friend. It carries you to places you do not want to go, and away from places you desperately long to visit. To reach your goals, your destinations, you must struggle against the current. You must swim and kick and claw against unrelenting forces directed away from your dreams. For so many, the current is not their friend but their enemy. As it pushes against their bodies and tears at their souls, it also whispers in their ears and begs them to give up.
Many do give up. They let go their handholds and set themselves into the river. They relax and wash downstream as their dreams sink below the vanishing horizon behind them. As they rest, freed from the struggle, it is their dreams that drown first, long before their bodies. The distance to their goals grows vast, and they remake themselves in a new image. They take on the goals of the murderous current. They deceive themselves in the name of rest and embrace certain doom as though it was their true destination all along. They pretend they want to go to the only place the current will take them. My young friend let go when he was 12 -- some last longer, others do not.
Steven Dykstra is a child psychologist with the Milwaukee County Child and Adolescent Treatment Center. He is an advanced certified lay speaker and teaches a Disciple Bible class at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This personal story and reflection appeared under the title "Surely Goodness And Mercy..." in Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B (CSS Publishing Company, 1996).
**********************************************
New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Jodie Felton, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. Click on the title above for information about how to order. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A, which begins in December.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
You can order any of our books on the CSS website; they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e-mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1-800-241-4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419-227-1818.)
**************
StoryShare, October 24, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2004 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
