Give Us This Bread
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"Give Us This Bread" by Sandra Herrmann
"Good And Gullible" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * *
Give Us This Bread
by Sandra Herrmann
John 6:24-35
Sue had never known a time when she hadn’t been hungry. It seemed she could never get enough to eat, even with a full pantry, a full refrigerator, and snacks on the counter. As she passed from room to room, she was always picking up something and popping it in her mouth. Her doctor had told her that “browsing” was a good way to lose weight, but she didn’t have fresh fruit or vegetables in plain sight. She had Pringles© and Doritos© and caramel corn in boxes and bags, packages of cookies, a drawer full of chocolates and other candies, and always ice cream or frozen custard in the freezer. She never ate much at a time, but there was seldom a time that she had nothing in her mouth -- if not food, chewing gum could slake her need to chew, for a while, at least.
She had tried one diet after another, but the foods they allowed weren’t the kind of thing she liked to eat. She had tried going to groups: Weight Watchers©, TOPS, Overeaters Anonymous, even AA, after someone told her she was “addicted to eating.” She loved the groups. Everyone there knew how important food was, and they usually went out to eat after the meetings. But in the end, she’d gained 10 more pounds.
She went to a counselor for a while, and the counselor said she needed to figure out what she was hungry for that she wasn’t getting. That gave her, you should pardon the expression, food for thought. She knew she felt left out of life. But that was silly, really -- she had everything a woman could want. She had a nice home, a beautiful yard, a lovely daughter, a husband who put up with her moods and brought her gifts when she was “down.” What more could anyone ask of life?
She did think, sometimes, that all of that was nice, but she had nothing of her own -- the house belonged to the family, after all. And while she loved being a mother, and her husband was generous, she sometimes wanted to go back to work. She missed having her own money. She also missed the camaraderie of being in an office, having somebody her own age to talk to, with the same worries and hopes. Her husband said that there were women out there who needed that job in order to support a family; she really shouldn’t take a job away from those in need. And that made sense, even though she wished it didn’t. So she wandered through the house, snacking here and there, hiding her ‘stash’ in the laundry room where her husband and daughter never went. That way, she could nibble while she worked, and didn’t have to go back to the kitchen every little while for something more.
She told herself that she was a lot better off than her sister, who drank. A lot. She’d caught her once, groping around under the bathroom sink for a bottle of whiskey she’d hidden there. She was so shocked, she had said, “WHAT are you DOING?” Her sister had snarled back, “Oh, don’t pull that holier-than-thou stuff on me! I’ve found your cookies under the sink, your chips by the bed, and your hot fudge in the pantry, behind the flour. You’re no better than I am.”
But Sue knew better. She didn’t get drunk from eating cookies. She did, she ruefully admitted to herself, get fat. She shuddered the last time she got on the scale. Two hundred, forty-seven pounds! She quickly slid the scale back into the corner, pulled it out again, and checked to make sure it was on zero. Sigh. Guess it was. 247 pounds!! How could she possibly have gotten heavier than her favorite football player?
She sat down in her recliner and put the foot up. Her doctor had said she needed to elevate her legs, they were turning red around the ankles with white spots. He said her arteries weren’t pumping as they should, and she needed to get pressure socks and wear them all the time. But she couldn’t stand them, they were hard to put on, and they made her legs hurt. She’d finally thrown them in the back of the closet.
She’d asked her doctor at that time if he could send her to a doctor who could staple her stomach. She thought that might be the only solution, and she was getting desperate. But he shook his head.
“Sue, the surgery works for people who habitually overeat at meals. You snack constantly, by your own report. Right?” He peered at her over his glasses.
She nodded. “You told me that eating small amounts frequently would help me lose weight.”
“Well, it’s true that people who eat that way tend to be thinner. But you have to know that with the stomach stapling, you can never eat more than two tablespoons of food at a time. Do you think you could eat just two tablespoons of food every two hours?”
Sue looked at the floor. She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.” But her heart fell. Two tablespoons?? That seemed ridiculous. That would be two bites of a steak or hamburger, four or five chips.
“The thing is, I have to cook for my family. How could I do that and have only a bite of whatever I cook?”
“That’s a good question,” the doctor replied. “If you taste your cooking at the stove, your stomach would be full when you sit down to eat. And if you eat too much, or too fast, you’ll throw up.”
Sue knew that would never work for her. She hated the idea of throwing up. So she said, “I’ll have to think about it.” The next time she saw the doctor, she didn’t ask for the surgery, and he didn’t ask her for a decision. So that was that.
She woke up with a snort. Had she fallen asleep in her chair? She put the foot back down and hauled herself upright. She had to stand there a minute till the room stopped spinning. A cola would help her feel better! She went out to the kitchen and filled a glass with ice and soda. Now, that hit the spot. A nice cold drink would put her right.
Trapped. She felt trapped. Trapped by her hunger. Trapped by her disappointments. Trapped in a lifestyle that was supposed to make her happy. All she was asking for was a little happiness -- was that too much to ask?
Sue reached for the chips and got a carton of dip out of the refrigerator, went back to her chair and turned on the T.V. She’d think about all that heavy stuff tomorrow.
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
* * * * * * *
Good And Gullible
by Frank Ramirez
Ephesians 4:1-16
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:14)
The words are famous, even though they were spoken by a fictional character: “....How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
Who wrote that? None other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who put those words in the mouth of his famous creation, the detective Sherlock Holmes.
Prior to the appearance of the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, detective stories involved chance, coincidence, and a good deal of luck. Doyle’s Sherlockian stories, sixty in all, about a detective who relied on logic and reasoning to solve crimes, not only captivated a worldwide audience, they changed the way detective stories are written to this day.
So it seems odd that, given Doyle’s seeming dependence on logic and reason, that he himself should become so captivated by a few scraps of colored paper captured by two young girls on film as to assert that proof of the existence of fairies had been revealed to the world.
But then, Doyle had allowed himself to be enthralled by a spiritual fads like Theosophy, Spiritualism and Mediums. That led him to believe in and champion a matter that came to be known as the Cottingley Fairies.
It all began in 1917. The world was embroiled in a brutal world war. Great armies were entrenched across Europe, and millions died in ghastly conditions.
One soldier from South Africa, serving in the English army, sent his ten-year-old daughter Frances Griffith to live with her thirteen-year-old cousin Elsie Wright, at her parent’s home in Cottingley. The two were fond of playing together, and often told stories of playing with the fairies in the estate’s garden. The stories were dismissed by Elsie father, Arthur Wright, as part of their harmless games. Then one day Elsie asked her father, Arthur Wright, if she could borrow his camera to take a photo of the fairies they’d been playing with. While laughing at their plan, he placed a photographic plate within the camera, showed her how to use it, and sent her off.
When the plate was finally developed, there was Frances, playing with a group of fairies. Arthur Wright was gently skeptical -- he thought that some harmless trickery was involved, and thought no more about it when a month later the two took a photo of Elsie playing with a gnome.
Elsie’s mother, Polly Wright, was far more intrigued and believing than her husband. She had copies made of the two prints and shared them with others. Two years later she showed the photos to a leader in the Theosophical movement, who began to spread the word these pictures proved the existence of fairies.
Eventually the matter came to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had come to believe in all manner of fad and fancy. He encouraged the girls to take additional pictures and they produced three more. Doyle wrote an influential article in the 1020 Christmas issue of the Strand magazine along with a book, The Cottingley Incident -- The Coming of the Fairies, which spread the word everywhere. Doyle spoke of higher planes of existence, special vibrations that rendered fairies invisible to the right people, wrapping everything in a veneer of pseudoscience.
Not all were convinced. Many who saw the photos believed the fairies looked two-dimensional, as if they had been cut out of paper and colored in. Gradually interest in the phenomenon faded. Nevertheless there were many true believers who insisted the photographs were authentic, insisting that the fairies were willing to appear to two young and innocent girls.
For a short time the two girls were famous. They were visited by so-called experts in theosophy and the paranormal, and years later admitted that they thought them all frauds but decided to play along. For, as they admitted decades later, when a world famous author like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came to believe in their hoax, they weren’t sure what else to do but play along.
For hoax it was. It was not until the 1980s that they admitted they’d cut figures out of a book called Princess Mary’s Gift Book and added wings. It is easy now to look back with surprise at how adults could be “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine,” as the apostle puts it, “by people’s trickery, by their craftiness is deceitful scheming,” but even today frauds are perpetrated with each new spiritual fad that has no basis in fact or scripture, each having their day because people are willing to believe in things that confirm what they think they already know.
(If your church has projection capabilities, the photographs of the fairies are available online, as is the book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 2, 2015, issue.
Copyright 2015 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., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Give Us This Bread" by Sandra Herrmann
"Good And Gullible" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * *
Give Us This Bread
by Sandra Herrmann
John 6:24-35
Sue had never known a time when she hadn’t been hungry. It seemed she could never get enough to eat, even with a full pantry, a full refrigerator, and snacks on the counter. As she passed from room to room, she was always picking up something and popping it in her mouth. Her doctor had told her that “browsing” was a good way to lose weight, but she didn’t have fresh fruit or vegetables in plain sight. She had Pringles© and Doritos© and caramel corn in boxes and bags, packages of cookies, a drawer full of chocolates and other candies, and always ice cream or frozen custard in the freezer. She never ate much at a time, but there was seldom a time that she had nothing in her mouth -- if not food, chewing gum could slake her need to chew, for a while, at least.
She had tried one diet after another, but the foods they allowed weren’t the kind of thing she liked to eat. She had tried going to groups: Weight Watchers©, TOPS, Overeaters Anonymous, even AA, after someone told her she was “addicted to eating.” She loved the groups. Everyone there knew how important food was, and they usually went out to eat after the meetings. But in the end, she’d gained 10 more pounds.
She went to a counselor for a while, and the counselor said she needed to figure out what she was hungry for that she wasn’t getting. That gave her, you should pardon the expression, food for thought. She knew she felt left out of life. But that was silly, really -- she had everything a woman could want. She had a nice home, a beautiful yard, a lovely daughter, a husband who put up with her moods and brought her gifts when she was “down.” What more could anyone ask of life?
She did think, sometimes, that all of that was nice, but she had nothing of her own -- the house belonged to the family, after all. And while she loved being a mother, and her husband was generous, she sometimes wanted to go back to work. She missed having her own money. She also missed the camaraderie of being in an office, having somebody her own age to talk to, with the same worries and hopes. Her husband said that there were women out there who needed that job in order to support a family; she really shouldn’t take a job away from those in need. And that made sense, even though she wished it didn’t. So she wandered through the house, snacking here and there, hiding her ‘stash’ in the laundry room where her husband and daughter never went. That way, she could nibble while she worked, and didn’t have to go back to the kitchen every little while for something more.
She told herself that she was a lot better off than her sister, who drank. A lot. She’d caught her once, groping around under the bathroom sink for a bottle of whiskey she’d hidden there. She was so shocked, she had said, “WHAT are you DOING?” Her sister had snarled back, “Oh, don’t pull that holier-than-thou stuff on me! I’ve found your cookies under the sink, your chips by the bed, and your hot fudge in the pantry, behind the flour. You’re no better than I am.”
But Sue knew better. She didn’t get drunk from eating cookies. She did, she ruefully admitted to herself, get fat. She shuddered the last time she got on the scale. Two hundred, forty-seven pounds! She quickly slid the scale back into the corner, pulled it out again, and checked to make sure it was on zero. Sigh. Guess it was. 247 pounds!! How could she possibly have gotten heavier than her favorite football player?
She sat down in her recliner and put the foot up. Her doctor had said she needed to elevate her legs, they were turning red around the ankles with white spots. He said her arteries weren’t pumping as they should, and she needed to get pressure socks and wear them all the time. But she couldn’t stand them, they were hard to put on, and they made her legs hurt. She’d finally thrown them in the back of the closet.
She’d asked her doctor at that time if he could send her to a doctor who could staple her stomach. She thought that might be the only solution, and she was getting desperate. But he shook his head.
“Sue, the surgery works for people who habitually overeat at meals. You snack constantly, by your own report. Right?” He peered at her over his glasses.
She nodded. “You told me that eating small amounts frequently would help me lose weight.”
“Well, it’s true that people who eat that way tend to be thinner. But you have to know that with the stomach stapling, you can never eat more than two tablespoons of food at a time. Do you think you could eat just two tablespoons of food every two hours?”
Sue looked at the floor. She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.” But her heart fell. Two tablespoons?? That seemed ridiculous. That would be two bites of a steak or hamburger, four or five chips.
“The thing is, I have to cook for my family. How could I do that and have only a bite of whatever I cook?”
“That’s a good question,” the doctor replied. “If you taste your cooking at the stove, your stomach would be full when you sit down to eat. And if you eat too much, or too fast, you’ll throw up.”
Sue knew that would never work for her. She hated the idea of throwing up. So she said, “I’ll have to think about it.” The next time she saw the doctor, she didn’t ask for the surgery, and he didn’t ask her for a decision. So that was that.
She woke up with a snort. Had she fallen asleep in her chair? She put the foot back down and hauled herself upright. She had to stand there a minute till the room stopped spinning. A cola would help her feel better! She went out to the kitchen and filled a glass with ice and soda. Now, that hit the spot. A nice cold drink would put her right.
Trapped. She felt trapped. Trapped by her hunger. Trapped by her disappointments. Trapped in a lifestyle that was supposed to make her happy. All she was asking for was a little happiness -- was that too much to ask?
Sue reached for the chips and got a carton of dip out of the refrigerator, went back to her chair and turned on the T.V. She’d think about all that heavy stuff tomorrow.
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
* * * * * * *
Good And Gullible
by Frank Ramirez
Ephesians 4:1-16
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. (Ephesians 4:14)
The words are famous, even though they were spoken by a fictional character: “....How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
Who wrote that? None other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who put those words in the mouth of his famous creation, the detective Sherlock Holmes.
Prior to the appearance of the first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, detective stories involved chance, coincidence, and a good deal of luck. Doyle’s Sherlockian stories, sixty in all, about a detective who relied on logic and reasoning to solve crimes, not only captivated a worldwide audience, they changed the way detective stories are written to this day.
So it seems odd that, given Doyle’s seeming dependence on logic and reason, that he himself should become so captivated by a few scraps of colored paper captured by two young girls on film as to assert that proof of the existence of fairies had been revealed to the world.
But then, Doyle had allowed himself to be enthralled by a spiritual fads like Theosophy, Spiritualism and Mediums. That led him to believe in and champion a matter that came to be known as the Cottingley Fairies.
It all began in 1917. The world was embroiled in a brutal world war. Great armies were entrenched across Europe, and millions died in ghastly conditions.
One soldier from South Africa, serving in the English army, sent his ten-year-old daughter Frances Griffith to live with her thirteen-year-old cousin Elsie Wright, at her parent’s home in Cottingley. The two were fond of playing together, and often told stories of playing with the fairies in the estate’s garden. The stories were dismissed by Elsie father, Arthur Wright, as part of their harmless games. Then one day Elsie asked her father, Arthur Wright, if she could borrow his camera to take a photo of the fairies they’d been playing with. While laughing at their plan, he placed a photographic plate within the camera, showed her how to use it, and sent her off.
When the plate was finally developed, there was Frances, playing with a group of fairies. Arthur Wright was gently skeptical -- he thought that some harmless trickery was involved, and thought no more about it when a month later the two took a photo of Elsie playing with a gnome.
Elsie’s mother, Polly Wright, was far more intrigued and believing than her husband. She had copies made of the two prints and shared them with others. Two years later she showed the photos to a leader in the Theosophical movement, who began to spread the word these pictures proved the existence of fairies.
Eventually the matter came to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had come to believe in all manner of fad and fancy. He encouraged the girls to take additional pictures and they produced three more. Doyle wrote an influential article in the 1020 Christmas issue of the Strand magazine along with a book, The Cottingley Incident -- The Coming of the Fairies, which spread the word everywhere. Doyle spoke of higher planes of existence, special vibrations that rendered fairies invisible to the right people, wrapping everything in a veneer of pseudoscience.
Not all were convinced. Many who saw the photos believed the fairies looked two-dimensional, as if they had been cut out of paper and colored in. Gradually interest in the phenomenon faded. Nevertheless there were many true believers who insisted the photographs were authentic, insisting that the fairies were willing to appear to two young and innocent girls.
For a short time the two girls were famous. They were visited by so-called experts in theosophy and the paranormal, and years later admitted that they thought them all frauds but decided to play along. For, as they admitted decades later, when a world famous author like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came to believe in their hoax, they weren’t sure what else to do but play along.
For hoax it was. It was not until the 1980s that they admitted they’d cut figures out of a book called Princess Mary’s Gift Book and added wings. It is easy now to look back with surprise at how adults could be “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine,” as the apostle puts it, “by people’s trickery, by their craftiness is deceitful scheming,” but even today frauds are perpetrated with each new spiritual fad that has no basis in fact or scripture, each having their day because people are willing to believe in things that confirm what they think they already know.
(If your church has projection capabilities, the photographs of the fairies are available online, as is the book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 2, 2015, issue.
Copyright 2015 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., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
