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A Story to Live By



Buried with Him in Baptism



In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

Colossians 2:11-12

Bishop Stephen Bouman of the ELCA's Metropolitan New York Synod tells this story of 9/11. He said he watched the towers burn from the synod office window. The chaplains of the New York Fire Department responded to the scene, some having to park their cars and just walk. When they got to the towers they asked the firefighters and paramedics going into the building what they needed. The response was "a blessing." One of the chaplains had a cruet of oil, and he began anointing the firefighters and paramedics as they went through the doors and into the towers. The sign of the cross was made on their foreheads and they were told to remember their baptisms. Some of the people who were coming down the stairs as the firefighters were going up commented about a glistening cross on the foreheads of the firefighters. Many of those firefighters never came back down.

Shining Moments



Steadfast Love

by Christal Bindrich

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.

Psalm 85:10-11

My brother died on March 15, 2001, at the age of 56. We were very close and each of us always knew when something was wrong with the other. His death was a very difficult adjustment for me.

I felt his presence, his spirit, was still with me. He had a great sense of humor and was the one who always lightened the grief in the family at a relative's passing by recalling funny stories. He had a firm belief in the eternal life that is promised us by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He faced his death bravely, and without fear.

Several months after his death, he visited me in a dream. In this dream, someone was trying to wake me. I am very difficult to wake up in the morning. I felt like water was being thrown in my face and I could feel someone reaching down and giving me a kiss on the cheek. I screamed in my dream and said, "Okay, I'm awake! You didn't need to throw water on me!"

When I opened my eyes, no one was there. My face was dry, except for the kiss on my cheek. I knew my brother had come one more time to say the good-bye we didn't get to say at the time of his death. He came to tell me it was all going to be all right.

Christal Bindrich is a pastor in the Wisconsin Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Good Stories



A New Perspective



"If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

Luke 11:13

One day the father in a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country, with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from the trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"It was great, Dad."

"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.

"Oh yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered: "I saw that we have one dog, and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden, and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden, and they have the stars at night. Our patio reaches to the front yard, and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on, and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, but they have friends to protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are."

Scrap Pile



Bus from Hell

by John Sumwalt

"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."

Luke 11:9b-10

In his book The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis suggests that some will continue to resist God's offer of grace even after death. He describes hell as a city populated with people convinced of their own righteousness and sufficiency. He imagines a bus traveling from hell to heaven each day. Those in hell are always welcome to visit heaven. They are met by saints who try to encourage them to stay. Most quickly board the bus for the return trip to hell.

The first to return to the bus is a man convinced that there must have been a mistake. He's met in heaven by one of his former employees who was convicted of murder. Terribly offended, he says, "What I'd like to understand is what you're here for, as pleased as Punch -- you, a bloody murderer, while I've been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigsty all these years."

The saint who was once a murderer freely admits his sin and tries to explain God's grace, but the man from hell will have nothing of it. He is convinced a great injustice has been done. He complains, "I'd rather be damned than go along with you. I came to get my rights, see? Not to go sniveling along on charity tied to your apron strings. If they're too fine to have me without you, I'll go home." He gets back on the bus. (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, pg. 36.)

Philip Gulley and James Mulholland write in their book If Grace Is True that they "share Lewis's hunch that the most resistant may be the self-righteous. Those who have sinned terribly are often the most receptive to grace. Our fear is that if hell exists it will be populated with people like the man Lewis described -- Christians offended by grace" (pg. 171).

Jesus clearly received this kind of reaction when he ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners. Today it would be homosexuals, abortionists, terrorists, skinheads, Ku Klux Klanners, and other kinds of racists. The Pharisees and Scribes were furious with him, just as they were when he told parables like "The Laborers in the Vineyard" (Matthew 20:1-16). The grace that Jesus describes in his stories and acts out in his friendships with people who are sinners is a threat to conventional expectations.

Those offended by Jesus' extravagant grace are quick to quote passages like "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:9). But they neglect passages like this one which occurs a little later on in the same chapter; Jesus says, "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they must listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd" (John 10:16).

Jesus' love for all the people of the world is broader than most of us can comprehend. It is boundless and endless. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, God waits for as long as it takes for the lost one to come home, longer than you or I would wait for a son we loved. And I don't know about you, but for me that would be forever and beyond.

I especially like what he says in John 3:19: "And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil." The man on "the bus from hell" had a choice to make every day, and he chose the darkness rather than the light. It is the same for each of us.

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New Book

The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), will be released this month by 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.

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 C

Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A

Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B

Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B

You can order any of our books on the CSS website (http://www.csspub.com); 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.)

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StoryShare, July 25, 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.