Bones
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Bones" by John Smylie
"Waiting" by Argile Smith
"Do You Suppose Job Flew Coach?" by Keith Hewitt
What's Up This Week
Life from death -- that is the central message of our faith. Out of the death of Jesus on the cross springs eternal life for every believer. Just as Ezekiel saw the dry bones given new life, so we who were dead in sin can see new life in our bones. John Smylie examines the notion of dead bones and new life in "Bones." In "Waiting," Argile Smith offers a glimpse of resurrection through the lens of a house fire. Even when it seems death has won, life can return if we wait for it. "Do You Suppose Job Flew Coach?" reminds us that God can always bring new life and new provision even when all seems lost, if we have the faith to believe.
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Bones
John Smylie
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Growing up in the suburbs, I didn't have a lot of opportunity to come across bones. Yes of course there were bones for dogs, steak bones, and milk bones, but I didn't run into a lot of bones in the manicured yards of friends and neighbors. Occasionally I would run into a dead mouse brought home to be admired by one of our Siamese cats but then one really only saw a limp and fleshy body of those poor creatures.
In the summers, we would head for the wilderness. As a family, we would pack up the station wagon with the rear seat facing out the back window. Dad would have one of the boats that he made during the winter trailing behind and we would drive for over eight hours through the Appalachian Mountains on the way to New Hampshire. We were very blessed to be able to rent a cottage on a beautiful and primitive lake. The cottage, also called a camp, was very rustic. The main room surrounded the large fireplace and at one end there was a staircase that lead up to the second floor on which there was a balcony that surrounded the entire living room. There were several bedrooms and bathrooms off the balcony. At the far ends of the second floor and visible from the living room there were two large heads. One was of a moose the other appeared to be a very large buck. On the second floor across from the fireplace there was a skull. I never was quite sure what it was and I think that was my first experience of old dry bones. It's probably a good thing that the Lord didn't come into that space and stir up those old bones, certainly I would have been terrified as a child to see that moose or that deer or that skull come off the wall and come alive.
Several years ago, my wife had an encounter with bones. It was an autumn day and I was in my home office working on a church project when from the garage I heard her scream, calling me to come. I don't remember ever having heard her sound so shook up before. I had no idea what it was that she could be screaming about. I left my office immediately and found her trembling in the garage pointing to a little skull on the floor next to our five-month-old puppy. He had brought home what he thought was a treasure from the woods.
Earlier that year Jill's faithful golden retriever of many years had to be put down. He was suffering greatly and could no longer even get up on his legs. We have a veterinarian who lives across the street from us in our home in Spokane who came over and took a look at Buddy. After a few moments, he recommended to us that we take him and have him put to sleep. He couldn't do it for us at our own home; we had to go to a local veterinarian who performed the task. The veterinarian asked if we would like to be with him when he died I said yes as did our youngest child; Jill declined. We went in and had Buddy put to sleep. He had been such a fine animal -- polite, respectful, and he would never enter the house without first being invited. It felt right to assist him in his last journey and though it was difficult, we both were glad to be in the room with him when he breathed his last breath.
In the springtime of that year, I decided that I would surprise Jill with a new puppy. I looked through the paper over the course of a couple weeks until it appeared that there would be a good selection for us to look at. Though there's no way of replacing one living creature with another, we knew that we liked golden retrievers and there was a new litter of golden retrievers with eight puppies available to pick out and pick up. We drove from Spokane into northern Idaho and found a humble home with a tired-looking mother golden retriever caring for eight lively little creatures. After spending time with each one of the puppies, we decided on a particular male that seemed to have a subdued personality. There was something quite aristocratic about his nature and we thought that he would be a bit easier to raise than some of the other more rambunctious little personalities that were running around on four legs.
We brought him home and named him Reilly. I don't know why we named him that it just felt right at the time. He was an excellent puppy. I will always remember the first time I put him on a leash and we walked down to the mailbox, which is a mile away from our home. Never once did he tug on the leash, the entire time he was on my right keeping in perfect step. I couldn't believe how well mannered and how adult he was behaving. Reilly enjoyed sleeping in the garage. One evening he disappeared. We wondered if perhaps someone had taken him. We also knew that there were coyotes in the area and we wondered if the coyotes had gotten hold of him during the night. I kept hoping he would return, but hours turned into days, and days turned into weeks and we knew that Reilly would not be returning.
At the end of summer, I took one of our children and went off on an evening adventure and found another little golden retriever puppy that I brought home. We named him RJ, which stands for Reilly Jr. He was a lot different than the original Reilly; in fact he still is. He is anything but aristocratic. The first time he went on a leash he pulled me the entire time. He's a sweetheart of an animal but far less disciplined than his namesake though over time he has grown to be better behaved. Our house in Spokane has a good deal of wooded area all around it. As RJ grew older, he enjoyed exploring the woods. On this particular day, the day that I heard Jill screaming in the garage, RJ had brought home a skull. Looking at the skull, I knew immediately that he had solved the mystery of Reilly's death. It was Reilly's skull that RJ brought back to our garage. That sweet life was now represented by a dry bone.
As sad as it was to discover that Reilly had died such a cruel death most likely by coyotes, it was also good to know what had happened to him. We now knew better how to pray for him, even at the time of his death, praying that his suffering was minimal, hoping that he would know our care for him even as he faced the horrors that sometimes occur in the natural world. I'm not sure bones are ever pleasant to come across because they represent a life that is no longer with us. I am sure that our Lord breathes life into our bones. Some of us may feel we have old bones that could use a little of the Spirit's breath upon us. Ezekiel lets us know that even the old dry bones, lost bones, and forgotten bones, the bones covered by sand and bleached by the sun, these old bones can have new life breathed into them.
Perhaps today as we reflect upon the good news that we find in the Spirit breathing life into the old bones that lay in the tomb, or bones that are scattered in the woods or bleached white under the desert sun, perhaps we can find hope in the deaths that we have faced in our lifetime, knowing and believing that our Lord is able to reconstruct, bring alive, renew, refresh, and even cause old bones to be reborn. I think in God's time I'll get to see Buddy again, and Reilly who lived for such a short time, and my dad who lived a faithful life and my grandfather who used to play with me when I was a little boy and my first wife who was a soul mate. All these who have gone before, who now are little more than bone and ash, I believe can and will have the Spirit blow upon them and on the last day they will arise and join in the triumphal procession through the pearly gates and walk upon the golden streets of heaven.
John S. Smylie is the rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Casper, Wyoming. Previously he served as the dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane, Washington. He is a published author and storyteller as well as a singer-songwriter. Smylie recently completed Grace for Today, a collection of 25 stories that explores how grace, loss, and restoration are part of the same fabric.
Waiting
Argile Smith
John 11:1-45; Psalm 130
The fire alarm jolted John and Sarah awake, and the smell of smoke in the bedroom triggered their hasty run through the darkness toward the door so they could escape. Once outside the house on the lawn, they heard Kittles, their dog, barking in fear. They ran to the back door, and forced their way inside to rescue their pet from the inferno that had been their house. A neighbor suffering from insomnia noticed the unfolding catastrophe next door and made the 911 call to the fire department. Then she joined the beleaguered couple with coats from her hallway closet in hand to keep them warm as they stood in the middle of the street and watched in shock as the fire raged.
John and Sarah wept in each other's arms as their life investment went up in flames. Both of their cars rested in the garage, just waiting for the blaze to consume them along with everything else in the house. The bright light and the menacing heat emanating from the windows and the front door signaled the growing intensity of the fire and the diminishing hope that anything would be saved.
Somewhere in the horror, John began to wonder about the fire department. When did the neighbor call for help? How much longer would he and Sarah have to wait before the fire fighters would arrive? Why hadn't they already gotten there? These kinds of questions flooded his mind as he stood there waiting and growing more frustrated over his helplessness. The questions suggested the direction of his thoughts. The fire department didn't arrive early enough, he started to reason with himself, and that's the reason his house would burn to the ground.
Little wonder, then, that by the time the fire trucks arrived, John began to get really angry, but he kept his composure. After all, the fire department in his town didn't have a huge staff of trained professionals. Most of fire fighters were volunteers. John knew that they were there because they cared, so he held his tongue.
By the time the fire fighters started to bring the blaze under control, most of the damage had already been done. The garage had gone up in flames, but the cars had been pulled out so the gas in the tanks wouldn't explode and make the situation even worse. By daybreak, John and Sarah knew that they had lost their home. With the rising of the sun, they could see the heap of ashes and charred wood that used to be a beautiful structure they had grown to love. Neither of them doubted that grieving their loss would take time, lots of time.
Months passed, and then John and Sarah began to see the light at the end of the tunnel of their ordeal. Their catastrophe had been blamed on a wiring problem, and the insurance company had been most generous with them. Luckily, contractors weren't swamped with other construction projects at the time, so the process of rebuilding began rather quickly. Before too long, they were able to move in to a brand new house, built this time to fit their needs and dreams even more precisely. As soon as they moved in, they planted flowers all over the lawn and made a generous contribution to the fire department as a way of commemorating the resurrection of their home and their lives from the ashes.
For Mary and Martha, Jesus was the source of hope (Psalm 130). As they waited for Him to come, they grew frustrated because He didn't show up in time to help Lazarus. However, they experienced the wonder of resurrection in His good time. So can we.
Argile Smith is vice president for advancement at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He has been the pastor of several congregations in Louisiana and Mississippi, and has also served as a preaching professor, chairman of the Division of Pastoral Ministries, and director of the communications center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. While at NOTBS, Smith regularly hosted the Gateway to Truth program on the FamilyNet television network.
Do You Suppose Job Flew Coach?
Keith Hewitt
Psalm 130
Based on our experience, and without the benefit of any scientific data or random sampling whatsoever, I feel pretty confident in saying that if you have the opportunity to read blogs or talk to people who have completed -- or are going through -- an international adoption, you will find that many or most of them have strong religious feelings. Whether this is because "religious people" are more likely to be drawn to adoption than others, or because the process itself tends to push you toward faith in a higher power, is still up for debate -- like most things, I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I certainly was not irreligious when we started the process of adoption: prayer had played a significant role in getting us to the point of adoption, then guiding us to the program that would suit us, and finally leading us to the child that we discovered was meant to be ours. Before we ever started, I had seen enough miracles to convince me that God was not only real, but was willing to take an interest in my life and help me, if I would just let him.
But it was adoption, in the end, that brought me to a place where I had to turn everything over to him -- a place where there was nowhere else to go, and no one else to turn to...
On paper, almost any itinerary can look pretty reasonable, and on December 16, 1999, our travel plans looked pretty straightforward:
December 17: Flt 2725 out of Midway LV 12:00 Noon
nonstop to Dulles Int'l AR 2:37 PM
Flt 318 out of Dulles LV 5:30 PM
via Shannon to Moscow Sheremetyevo AR 1:15 PM Dec 18
Apart from the fact that we were going to Moscow in the dead of winter (nobody goes to Moscow in December -- ask Napoleon or Hitler) it looked pretty straightforward.
By December 17, things had changed.
For us, December 17 was supposed to be the beginning of a great adventure. Instead, it was the kind of day that Job would look at and say, "Man, I'm glad that's not me." We had the first significant snowfall of the season that day, so just getting to the airport was a slow-motion nightmare. Once we were there, along with another couple of thousand people, we went through the check-in line only to discover that our flight had been canceled due to mechanical problems.
No worries, though, they assured us -- they had found seats for my wife, our daughter, and I on a Southwest Airlines flight leaving about an hour later -- for Baltimore. The agent assured us there would be no problem in getting from Baltimore to Dulles in time to catch our flight, and shooed us on our way, pointing out that the check-in line for Southwest was over there. (Imagine the population of Iowa standing in a serpentine line, and that's pretty much what it was.) We got to the counter not long before the flight was scheduled to leave -- but it turned out that wasn't a problem, because the departure had been delayed by half an hour.
And so it went... by the time we arrived in Baltimore and picked up our luggage, there was a scant hour to get from there to Dulles. The driver did his level best, I'm sure, but Friday afternoon traffic in the Washington area was about what you'd expect -- progress was a slow crawl, at best. In the backseat, holding a duffel bag in my lap, I tried not to look at my watch, or out the window -- instead, I prayed, the same prayer over and over: "God will deliver. God will provide."
We almost made it.
Our flight (we found out) had pulled away from the gate about the time our limo was pulling up in front of the Dulles departure terminal -- the first flight of our day that had left on time. The agent at the desk told us there was nothing they could do -- the baggage handlers had already gone home for the day; even if the pilot was willing to come back to the terminal, there would be no one to screen our luggage, no one to get it aboard the plane. There would be no more flights to Moscow until next week.
When we explained that we had to be on that flight, that we had to get to Moscow, the man just shrugged and handed us a card with the airline's customer service number. "Try calling them Monday," he suggested, and turned away. It was at that moment that things reached their worst, because in my heart of hearts I knew that there was nothing anyone could do. The adoption hearing was set for Monday, and trying to reschedule it -- if it could be done at all -- was liable to take months.
That's when I turned it over to God. God will deliver. God will provide. I took a deep breath or two, and asked to speak to a manager. The agent just shrugged again, told us to sit down and wait while he called someone. My wife and daughter sat; I stayed at the counter, alternately bowing my head and praying, and asking the man when we would get to talk to someone. Politely.
More than an hour crawled by before "someone" arrived. Her name was Pat, and she was the assistant station manager for the airline at Dulles. The agent explained the situation to her while she looked over our now-useless tickets; I filled in the blank spots in his story, explaining how our flight had been canceled, and the next one delayed, and how critical it was for us to get to Moscow, so we could catch an interior flight to the city from where we were adopting a child.
She looked at the tickets and shook her head, told us virtually the same thing the agent had said. There were no more flights 'til next week. There was nothing they could do; technically, since the trip wasn't booked as a continuous journey, it wasn't really their problem -- but maybe Customer Service could do something on Monday -- Monday would be too late, I said, and explained again about the court date. If someone has not been through the bureaucracy, it's hard to understand just what it takes to get anything done just once. I leaned over the counter, rested my head on my arms while she studied the tickets. God will deliver. God will provide. I raised my head and glanced back to where my wife and daughter were sitting, saw that Rachel's head was bowed in prayer, too. Or maybe exhaustion. Our daughter was working hard on not crying.
That is when I believe God touched the manager's heart. She frowned a little, told me to come with her, back to the office, and escorted me across the terminal to something that looked like it might have started life as a storage closet. Wordlessly, she pointed to a chair while she squeezed behind her own desk. I expected that she would call somebody, but instead she just spent long minutes studying her monitor, occasionally stroking keys. I alternated silent prayer with inane conversation.
Finally, she tapped one key with some finality, leaned back in her chair; it squeaked, loud in the silence. "Mister Hewitt," she said, "there's a Delta flight out of JFK tomorrow afternoon that will get to Moscow on Sunday afternoon. You and your family are booked on it. There aren't anymore flights to New York tonight, but we've booked you on a shuttle tomorrow morning, so you'll be there in plenty of time. Your tickets are all paid for." She paused, and smiled for the first time since we'd met. "You're lucky they still had three openings on that flight."
Once it all sunk in, once I knew we would be Russia-bound on Saturday, I just nodded dumbly -- but in my heart I knew that luck had nothing to do with it. From the depths of despair, on a day when nothing had gone right, we had called out for help. And God had provided. The adventure was back on...
Post Script: The outcome of December 17, 1999, was not all about keeping a schedule, or even doing battle with bureaucracies. The clear fact is that the American Embassy was going to be closed starting December 24, and they were not planning on opening again for several weeks. There is no telling how long it would have taken to set up another hearing with the Russian government, and be able to process our son through the Embassy.
It is a matter of record that the Russian government virtually shut down foreign adoptions in the Spring of 2000, for about a year. It is also a matter of personal record that my mother was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer in the first week of January 2000, and passed away in a matter of a few weeks.
But not before she had a chance to meet her newest grandson, and teach him to blow kisses...
Keith Hewitt is the author of NaTiVity Dramas: Four Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages. He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT Department at a major public safety testing organization.
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StoryShare, March 9, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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What's Up This Week
"Bones" by John Smylie
"Waiting" by Argile Smith
"Do You Suppose Job Flew Coach?" by Keith Hewitt
What's Up This Week
Life from death -- that is the central message of our faith. Out of the death of Jesus on the cross springs eternal life for every believer. Just as Ezekiel saw the dry bones given new life, so we who were dead in sin can see new life in our bones. John Smylie examines the notion of dead bones and new life in "Bones." In "Waiting," Argile Smith offers a glimpse of resurrection through the lens of a house fire. Even when it seems death has won, life can return if we wait for it. "Do You Suppose Job Flew Coach?" reminds us that God can always bring new life and new provision even when all seems lost, if we have the faith to believe.
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Bones
John Smylie
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Growing up in the suburbs, I didn't have a lot of opportunity to come across bones. Yes of course there were bones for dogs, steak bones, and milk bones, but I didn't run into a lot of bones in the manicured yards of friends and neighbors. Occasionally I would run into a dead mouse brought home to be admired by one of our Siamese cats but then one really only saw a limp and fleshy body of those poor creatures.
In the summers, we would head for the wilderness. As a family, we would pack up the station wagon with the rear seat facing out the back window. Dad would have one of the boats that he made during the winter trailing behind and we would drive for over eight hours through the Appalachian Mountains on the way to New Hampshire. We were very blessed to be able to rent a cottage on a beautiful and primitive lake. The cottage, also called a camp, was very rustic. The main room surrounded the large fireplace and at one end there was a staircase that lead up to the second floor on which there was a balcony that surrounded the entire living room. There were several bedrooms and bathrooms off the balcony. At the far ends of the second floor and visible from the living room there were two large heads. One was of a moose the other appeared to be a very large buck. On the second floor across from the fireplace there was a skull. I never was quite sure what it was and I think that was my first experience of old dry bones. It's probably a good thing that the Lord didn't come into that space and stir up those old bones, certainly I would have been terrified as a child to see that moose or that deer or that skull come off the wall and come alive.
Several years ago, my wife had an encounter with bones. It was an autumn day and I was in my home office working on a church project when from the garage I heard her scream, calling me to come. I don't remember ever having heard her sound so shook up before. I had no idea what it was that she could be screaming about. I left my office immediately and found her trembling in the garage pointing to a little skull on the floor next to our five-month-old puppy. He had brought home what he thought was a treasure from the woods.
Earlier that year Jill's faithful golden retriever of many years had to be put down. He was suffering greatly and could no longer even get up on his legs. We have a veterinarian who lives across the street from us in our home in Spokane who came over and took a look at Buddy. After a few moments, he recommended to us that we take him and have him put to sleep. He couldn't do it for us at our own home; we had to go to a local veterinarian who performed the task. The veterinarian asked if we would like to be with him when he died I said yes as did our youngest child; Jill declined. We went in and had Buddy put to sleep. He had been such a fine animal -- polite, respectful, and he would never enter the house without first being invited. It felt right to assist him in his last journey and though it was difficult, we both were glad to be in the room with him when he breathed his last breath.
In the springtime of that year, I decided that I would surprise Jill with a new puppy. I looked through the paper over the course of a couple weeks until it appeared that there would be a good selection for us to look at. Though there's no way of replacing one living creature with another, we knew that we liked golden retrievers and there was a new litter of golden retrievers with eight puppies available to pick out and pick up. We drove from Spokane into northern Idaho and found a humble home with a tired-looking mother golden retriever caring for eight lively little creatures. After spending time with each one of the puppies, we decided on a particular male that seemed to have a subdued personality. There was something quite aristocratic about his nature and we thought that he would be a bit easier to raise than some of the other more rambunctious little personalities that were running around on four legs.
We brought him home and named him Reilly. I don't know why we named him that it just felt right at the time. He was an excellent puppy. I will always remember the first time I put him on a leash and we walked down to the mailbox, which is a mile away from our home. Never once did he tug on the leash, the entire time he was on my right keeping in perfect step. I couldn't believe how well mannered and how adult he was behaving. Reilly enjoyed sleeping in the garage. One evening he disappeared. We wondered if perhaps someone had taken him. We also knew that there were coyotes in the area and we wondered if the coyotes had gotten hold of him during the night. I kept hoping he would return, but hours turned into days, and days turned into weeks and we knew that Reilly would not be returning.
At the end of summer, I took one of our children and went off on an evening adventure and found another little golden retriever puppy that I brought home. We named him RJ, which stands for Reilly Jr. He was a lot different than the original Reilly; in fact he still is. He is anything but aristocratic. The first time he went on a leash he pulled me the entire time. He's a sweetheart of an animal but far less disciplined than his namesake though over time he has grown to be better behaved. Our house in Spokane has a good deal of wooded area all around it. As RJ grew older, he enjoyed exploring the woods. On this particular day, the day that I heard Jill screaming in the garage, RJ had brought home a skull. Looking at the skull, I knew immediately that he had solved the mystery of Reilly's death. It was Reilly's skull that RJ brought back to our garage. That sweet life was now represented by a dry bone.
As sad as it was to discover that Reilly had died such a cruel death most likely by coyotes, it was also good to know what had happened to him. We now knew better how to pray for him, even at the time of his death, praying that his suffering was minimal, hoping that he would know our care for him even as he faced the horrors that sometimes occur in the natural world. I'm not sure bones are ever pleasant to come across because they represent a life that is no longer with us. I am sure that our Lord breathes life into our bones. Some of us may feel we have old bones that could use a little of the Spirit's breath upon us. Ezekiel lets us know that even the old dry bones, lost bones, and forgotten bones, the bones covered by sand and bleached by the sun, these old bones can have new life breathed into them.
Perhaps today as we reflect upon the good news that we find in the Spirit breathing life into the old bones that lay in the tomb, or bones that are scattered in the woods or bleached white under the desert sun, perhaps we can find hope in the deaths that we have faced in our lifetime, knowing and believing that our Lord is able to reconstruct, bring alive, renew, refresh, and even cause old bones to be reborn. I think in God's time I'll get to see Buddy again, and Reilly who lived for such a short time, and my dad who lived a faithful life and my grandfather who used to play with me when I was a little boy and my first wife who was a soul mate. All these who have gone before, who now are little more than bone and ash, I believe can and will have the Spirit blow upon them and on the last day they will arise and join in the triumphal procession through the pearly gates and walk upon the golden streets of heaven.
John S. Smylie is the rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Casper, Wyoming. Previously he served as the dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane, Washington. He is a published author and storyteller as well as a singer-songwriter. Smylie recently completed Grace for Today, a collection of 25 stories that explores how grace, loss, and restoration are part of the same fabric.
Waiting
Argile Smith
John 11:1-45; Psalm 130
The fire alarm jolted John and Sarah awake, and the smell of smoke in the bedroom triggered their hasty run through the darkness toward the door so they could escape. Once outside the house on the lawn, they heard Kittles, their dog, barking in fear. They ran to the back door, and forced their way inside to rescue their pet from the inferno that had been their house. A neighbor suffering from insomnia noticed the unfolding catastrophe next door and made the 911 call to the fire department. Then she joined the beleaguered couple with coats from her hallway closet in hand to keep them warm as they stood in the middle of the street and watched in shock as the fire raged.
John and Sarah wept in each other's arms as their life investment went up in flames. Both of their cars rested in the garage, just waiting for the blaze to consume them along with everything else in the house. The bright light and the menacing heat emanating from the windows and the front door signaled the growing intensity of the fire and the diminishing hope that anything would be saved.
Somewhere in the horror, John began to wonder about the fire department. When did the neighbor call for help? How much longer would he and Sarah have to wait before the fire fighters would arrive? Why hadn't they already gotten there? These kinds of questions flooded his mind as he stood there waiting and growing more frustrated over his helplessness. The questions suggested the direction of his thoughts. The fire department didn't arrive early enough, he started to reason with himself, and that's the reason his house would burn to the ground.
Little wonder, then, that by the time the fire trucks arrived, John began to get really angry, but he kept his composure. After all, the fire department in his town didn't have a huge staff of trained professionals. Most of fire fighters were volunteers. John knew that they were there because they cared, so he held his tongue.
By the time the fire fighters started to bring the blaze under control, most of the damage had already been done. The garage had gone up in flames, but the cars had been pulled out so the gas in the tanks wouldn't explode and make the situation even worse. By daybreak, John and Sarah knew that they had lost their home. With the rising of the sun, they could see the heap of ashes and charred wood that used to be a beautiful structure they had grown to love. Neither of them doubted that grieving their loss would take time, lots of time.
Months passed, and then John and Sarah began to see the light at the end of the tunnel of their ordeal. Their catastrophe had been blamed on a wiring problem, and the insurance company had been most generous with them. Luckily, contractors weren't swamped with other construction projects at the time, so the process of rebuilding began rather quickly. Before too long, they were able to move in to a brand new house, built this time to fit their needs and dreams even more precisely. As soon as they moved in, they planted flowers all over the lawn and made a generous contribution to the fire department as a way of commemorating the resurrection of their home and their lives from the ashes.
For Mary and Martha, Jesus was the source of hope (Psalm 130). As they waited for Him to come, they grew frustrated because He didn't show up in time to help Lazarus. However, they experienced the wonder of resurrection in His good time. So can we.
Argile Smith is vice president for advancement at William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He has been the pastor of several congregations in Louisiana and Mississippi, and has also served as a preaching professor, chairman of the Division of Pastoral Ministries, and director of the communications center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. While at NOTBS, Smith regularly hosted the Gateway to Truth program on the FamilyNet television network.
Do You Suppose Job Flew Coach?
Keith Hewitt
Psalm 130
Based on our experience, and without the benefit of any scientific data or random sampling whatsoever, I feel pretty confident in saying that if you have the opportunity to read blogs or talk to people who have completed -- or are going through -- an international adoption, you will find that many or most of them have strong religious feelings. Whether this is because "religious people" are more likely to be drawn to adoption than others, or because the process itself tends to push you toward faith in a higher power, is still up for debate -- like most things, I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
I certainly was not irreligious when we started the process of adoption: prayer had played a significant role in getting us to the point of adoption, then guiding us to the program that would suit us, and finally leading us to the child that we discovered was meant to be ours. Before we ever started, I had seen enough miracles to convince me that God was not only real, but was willing to take an interest in my life and help me, if I would just let him.
But it was adoption, in the end, that brought me to a place where I had to turn everything over to him -- a place where there was nowhere else to go, and no one else to turn to...
On paper, almost any itinerary can look pretty reasonable, and on December 16, 1999, our travel plans looked pretty straightforward:
December 17: Flt 2725 out of Midway LV 12:00 Noon
nonstop to Dulles Int'l AR 2:37 PM
Flt 318 out of Dulles LV 5:30 PM
via Shannon to Moscow Sheremetyevo AR 1:15 PM Dec 18
Apart from the fact that we were going to Moscow in the dead of winter (nobody goes to Moscow in December -- ask Napoleon or Hitler) it looked pretty straightforward.
By December 17, things had changed.
For us, December 17 was supposed to be the beginning of a great adventure. Instead, it was the kind of day that Job would look at and say, "Man, I'm glad that's not me." We had the first significant snowfall of the season that day, so just getting to the airport was a slow-motion nightmare. Once we were there, along with another couple of thousand people, we went through the check-in line only to discover that our flight had been canceled due to mechanical problems.
No worries, though, they assured us -- they had found seats for my wife, our daughter, and I on a Southwest Airlines flight leaving about an hour later -- for Baltimore. The agent assured us there would be no problem in getting from Baltimore to Dulles in time to catch our flight, and shooed us on our way, pointing out that the check-in line for Southwest was over there. (Imagine the population of Iowa standing in a serpentine line, and that's pretty much what it was.) We got to the counter not long before the flight was scheduled to leave -- but it turned out that wasn't a problem, because the departure had been delayed by half an hour.
And so it went... by the time we arrived in Baltimore and picked up our luggage, there was a scant hour to get from there to Dulles. The driver did his level best, I'm sure, but Friday afternoon traffic in the Washington area was about what you'd expect -- progress was a slow crawl, at best. In the backseat, holding a duffel bag in my lap, I tried not to look at my watch, or out the window -- instead, I prayed, the same prayer over and over: "God will deliver. God will provide."
We almost made it.
Our flight (we found out) had pulled away from the gate about the time our limo was pulling up in front of the Dulles departure terminal -- the first flight of our day that had left on time. The agent at the desk told us there was nothing they could do -- the baggage handlers had already gone home for the day; even if the pilot was willing to come back to the terminal, there would be no one to screen our luggage, no one to get it aboard the plane. There would be no more flights to Moscow until next week.
When we explained that we had to be on that flight, that we had to get to Moscow, the man just shrugged and handed us a card with the airline's customer service number. "Try calling them Monday," he suggested, and turned away. It was at that moment that things reached their worst, because in my heart of hearts I knew that there was nothing anyone could do. The adoption hearing was set for Monday, and trying to reschedule it -- if it could be done at all -- was liable to take months.
That's when I turned it over to God. God will deliver. God will provide. I took a deep breath or two, and asked to speak to a manager. The agent just shrugged again, told us to sit down and wait while he called someone. My wife and daughter sat; I stayed at the counter, alternately bowing my head and praying, and asking the man when we would get to talk to someone. Politely.
More than an hour crawled by before "someone" arrived. Her name was Pat, and she was the assistant station manager for the airline at Dulles. The agent explained the situation to her while she looked over our now-useless tickets; I filled in the blank spots in his story, explaining how our flight had been canceled, and the next one delayed, and how critical it was for us to get to Moscow, so we could catch an interior flight to the city from where we were adopting a child.
She looked at the tickets and shook her head, told us virtually the same thing the agent had said. There were no more flights 'til next week. There was nothing they could do; technically, since the trip wasn't booked as a continuous journey, it wasn't really their problem -- but maybe Customer Service could do something on Monday -- Monday would be too late, I said, and explained again about the court date. If someone has not been through the bureaucracy, it's hard to understand just what it takes to get anything done just once. I leaned over the counter, rested my head on my arms while she studied the tickets. God will deliver. God will provide. I raised my head and glanced back to where my wife and daughter were sitting, saw that Rachel's head was bowed in prayer, too. Or maybe exhaustion. Our daughter was working hard on not crying.
That is when I believe God touched the manager's heart. She frowned a little, told me to come with her, back to the office, and escorted me across the terminal to something that looked like it might have started life as a storage closet. Wordlessly, she pointed to a chair while she squeezed behind her own desk. I expected that she would call somebody, but instead she just spent long minutes studying her monitor, occasionally stroking keys. I alternated silent prayer with inane conversation.
Finally, she tapped one key with some finality, leaned back in her chair; it squeaked, loud in the silence. "Mister Hewitt," she said, "there's a Delta flight out of JFK tomorrow afternoon that will get to Moscow on Sunday afternoon. You and your family are booked on it. There aren't anymore flights to New York tonight, but we've booked you on a shuttle tomorrow morning, so you'll be there in plenty of time. Your tickets are all paid for." She paused, and smiled for the first time since we'd met. "You're lucky they still had three openings on that flight."
Once it all sunk in, once I knew we would be Russia-bound on Saturday, I just nodded dumbly -- but in my heart I knew that luck had nothing to do with it. From the depths of despair, on a day when nothing had gone right, we had called out for help. And God had provided. The adventure was back on...
Post Script: The outcome of December 17, 1999, was not all about keeping a schedule, or even doing battle with bureaucracies. The clear fact is that the American Embassy was going to be closed starting December 24, and they were not planning on opening again for several weeks. There is no telling how long it would have taken to set up another hearing with the Russian government, and be able to process our son through the Embassy.
It is a matter of record that the Russian government virtually shut down foreign adoptions in the Spring of 2000, for about a year. It is also a matter of personal record that my mother was diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer in the first week of January 2000, and passed away in a matter of a few weeks.
But not before she had a chance to meet her newest grandson, and teach him to blow kisses...
Keith Hewitt is the author of NaTiVity Dramas: Four Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages. He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT Department at a major public safety testing organization.
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StoryShare, March 9, 2008, issue.
Copyright 2008 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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