A Glass Of Milk
Stories
Object:
Contents
A Story to Live By: "Honor the Poor"
Good Stories: "A Glass of Milk"
Sharing Visions: "Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha" by Allan McCauley (as told to Rebecca Coan Henderleiter)
Scrap Pile: "Foreign Territory" by John Sumwalt
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On Being Poor
I grew up "poor" -- or so I thought. My siblings and I wore hand-me-downs from our better-off cousins in the city, and we were glad to get them. There was one Christmas, just after our family moved to a new farm, when we were the recipients of a Christmas basket of fruit, candy, cookies, and a turkey from a charity group in our county. There was rarely extra money for luxuries like restaurants, movies, or vacations. I didn't stay in a motel until I was 16, and then only because I won a regional wrestling tournament and my school paid for a room so I could compete in the sectional in a distant town. After I won the sectionals and earned the honor of going to the state tournament in Madison, I was very self-conscious about being the only wrestler there who didn't have proper "wrestling" shoes. I wore an old pair of black and white canvas shoes. It proved to be one of the richest experiences of my young life, despite the embarrassing shoes and the fact that I was eliminated by a pin in the first round.
It was on a trip to Mississippi in 1970, the summer after my freshman year in college, that I learned what it really meant to be "poor" in America. I went with a group called Project Understanding as part of a cultural exchange program. We stayed in the homes of rural African-Americans (although that is not a term used at that time) in Marshall and Carroll Counties. I was in "foreign territory," like Jesus was when he ventured into the realm of the Syrophoenician woman (see the Scrap Pile offering below) .
When the bus pulled up at a small shack of a house outside Holly Springs, we were greeted by children with distended stomachs protruding from their ragged clothes. It was a condition caused by an inadequate diet and a lack of money to pay for the operation needed to correct the disfigurement. Inside the house the stench of urine-soaked dirt came up through large cracks in the floors. I wanted to get back on the bus and go home. I had no choice but to stay and receive one of the greatest blessings of my life in eight days of living in real poverty with some of the most courageous, spirit-filled people I have ever known. I met leaders who risked their lives in the early days of the civil rights movement, who were beaten and jailed and were the first people with black skin to register and vote in their communities. Our group worshiped in a country church where few white people had worshiped before, and afterwards we were served some of the best food I've ever tasted. It was a life-changing, perhaps a life-saving, experience. I was never the same after that, thank God!
I invite you to send your personal stories of life-changing moments in "foreign territory." Write to us directly at jsumwalt@naspa.net
John Sumwalt
Co-Editor of StoryShare
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A Story to Live By
Honor the Poor
Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?
James 2:5b
Thomas Lynch, an undertaker and author from Milford, Michigan, tells of a priest he called to bury an indigent man:
... a man without family or friends or finances. He, the gravediggers, and I carried the casket to the grave. The priest incensed the body, blessed it with holy water, and read from the liturgy for 20 minutes, then sang In Paridisum -- that gorgeous Latin for "May the angels lead you into Paradise" -- as we lowered the poor man's body into the ground. When I asked him why he'd gone to such trouble, he said these are the most important funerals -- even if only God is watching -- because it affirms the agreement between "all God's children" that we will witness, remember, and take care of each other.
(from "Good Grief: An Undertaker's Reflections" by Thomas Lynch, Christian Century, July 26, 2003, pg. 23. Lynch's latest book is The Undertaking: Bodies in Motion and at Rest. For more information about Thomas Lynch, click http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/lynch1739-des-.html)
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Good Stories
A Glass of Milk
Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause ...
Proverbs 22:22-23a
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
James 2:14-17
One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry, so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?"
"You don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness."
He said, "Then I thank you from my heart."
As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strong also. He had been ready to give up and quit.
Years later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor's gown, he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case.
After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words:
PAID IN FULL WITH ONE GLASS OF MILK.
(Signed) Dr. Howard Kelly
Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: "Thank You, God, that Your love is shed abroad through human hearts and hands."
Note: This is one of those well-traveled stories -- its exact origin is unknown. As is often the case, someone fictionalized some of the details, but it is essentially a true event.
The truthorfiction.com website (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/oneglassofmilk.htm) states that Dr. Howard Kelly was a distinguished physician who in 1895 founded the division of Gynecologic Oncology at Johns Hopkins University. According to Dr. Kelly's biographer, Audrey Davis, the doctor was on a walking trip through northern Pennsylvania one spring day when he stopped by a farmhouse for a drink of water. A little girl answered his knock at the door, and instead of water brought him a glass of fresh milk. He visited with her briefly, then went on his way. Sometime after that, the little girl came to him as a patient and needed surgery. After the surgery, the bill was brought to her room and on it were the words "Paid in full with one glass of milk."
Dr. Kelly was quite a colorful character -- in addition to being a skilled surgeon who invented numerous medical devices, he was a reptile collector and a bible-thumping Christian who read the good book in the original Greek and Hebrew and called a prayer meeting before every operation. You can read more about him at http://www.mostlyweb.com/portfolio/hopkins/jhPages/kelly.html.
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Sharing Visions
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
by Allan McCauley (as told to Rebecca Coan Henderleiter)
Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
Mark 7:34-35
Peter, our 4-year-old son, was suffering from chronic otitis media, a disease of the middle ear that was causing him to go deaf. Two specialists, Dr. Besserman and Dr. Barnett, concurred that the only option to save Peter's hearing would be to surgically implant tubes in his ears. After the surgery, Peter would no longer be allowed to go swimming, which devastated him because he loved the water so much. Living in Arizona, swimming was a part of everyday activities in order to escape the summer heat.
At that time, my wife Marlene and I were involved in setting up lectures in Arizona churches by Rev. Francis X. Weiser, S.J., who had just published a book on the life of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk-Algonquin virgin who lived between 1656 and 1680. She had been declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XII in 1943 and "Blessed" by Pope John Paul II in 1980, the first two steps toward sainthood. She will be the first Native American saint.
One day when Peter, Marlene, and I were picking up Father Weiser at the airport, we were speaking very loudly, nearly shouting, so that Peter could hear our conversation. "Why are you yelling?" Father Weiser asked.
"Our son has a serious ear problem and is nearly deaf," I explained.
"Deafness?" the Father said in his thick German accent. "Then let us ask Kateri to help! She leaves no prayer unanswered!"
We began a 9-day novena asking Kateri's intercession, as the Father had instructed. On the ninth day, April 17, 1973, the feast of Kateri's death, Marlene and I were making plans for Peter's upcoming surgery. I asked her a question, and much to my surprise, Peter responded! This was amazing! We had been speaking in normal tones that he couldn't hear. I took Peter to the back of the house, away from noise, covered his ears one at a time, and whispered. He could hear me perfectly.
We returned to his physicians, who affirmed that his hearing was completely restored. Peter has perfect hearing, and to this day has not had any recurrence. In fact, he returned to swimming the very day of that doctor's examination, and continues to enjoy water sports with not even the slightest of problems.
Peter recently obtained a master's degree in molecular biology and is now a second-year law student at the University of Houston. He plans to combine medicine with law, and is awaiting word on his application to medical school, which he will attend upon graduation from law school. His healing is one of many attributed to Kateri in the depository at the Vatican. We never received official word that it was accepted as a miracle, as one of our doctors refused to cooperate with the Vatican. He believed that medicine prescribed could have been responsible for the healing, however Peter never took that medicine. He hated it and spit it out whenever Marlene tried to give it to him. Dr. Barnett said he had no medical explanation whatsoever for the instant cure. Chronic middle ear problems resulting in deafness do not heal instantly under any circumstances.
In 1980, my family attended the beatification ceremony for the now Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. Sitting next to us was a man reading The Sunday Visitor. Much to our surprise, Peter's photo was on the front page with the large headline "Peter Returns to Rome to Thank Kateri!"
We continue lectures on Blessed Kateri and pray for the day that another undisputed miracle is attributed to her intercession, so that she may be known as Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.
Allan and Marlene McCauley live in Phoenix, Arizona, where Allan has practiced trial law for thirty years. Marlene is an artist and the author of Adventures with a Saint: Kateri Tekakwitha, "Lily of the Mohawks" and Whitey from Heaven: A Wondrous Cat. Both of them lecture on Kateri. As an avocation, Allan, Marlene, and their six children for many years performed puppet shows all over the U.S. as "The McCauley Family Theater."
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Scrap Pile
Foreign Territory
by John Sumwalt
The following is from a sermon based on Matthew's version of the story of the Syrophoenician woman (see Matthew 15:21-28).
Seeking to avoid the crowds that surrounded him everywhere he went in Israel, Jesus leaves the country for a little R&R. Tyre and Sidon were in Phoenicia, a region in Syria which stretched north between Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea.
This is foreign territory, a dangerous place for a Jew to be. The Phoenicians are of Canaanite stock, the ancestral enemies of the Jews, the forbearers of the people we know as Palestinians today. To Jews in Jesus' time, all non-Jews (that is, all gentiles) were considered to be unclean. Anyone who did not keep the Jewish cleanliness laws was by definition "dirty." A Jew was to have nothing to do with anyone who was unclean.
Have you heard the expression "dirty foreigner"? Some of us have grown up in families who were called that when we emigrated here from another part of the world. My own Irish ancestors, my mother's people, the Longs of Longfield (in Tipperary), who came to Wisconsin in the 1850s during the potato famine, were called that and worse. I believe "dirty micks" was the most common expression of derision. Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Hispanic, Asian, African, Indian, Scandinavian, Native American, Arab, and Jew -- we have all had our turn as a despised minority in Wisconsin.
I am sad to say that in my childhood I heard members of my own extended family refer to African-Americans as "dirty." When I was in high school our family was a part of an exchange program with a county in Mississippi. An eleven-year-old African-American girl named Linda Gulledge came to stay with us for three weeks. One of our relatives was quite distressed about this. She said to my mother, "Aren't you worried about her blackness rubbing off on the sheets?" She was very serious.
That is an attitude born of fear and ignorance, a learned social prejudice which has no basis in fact but is as common in our time as it was in first-century Israel.
Some of you remember the late Larry Wasson, a longtime member of this congregation who used to tell about his racist upbringing in a little coal-mining town in the foothills of the Ozarks in Arkansas. Larry said:
"One of the high points of the history of this little town, its sense of its importance, was a simple statement that floated around the community almost like an ambiance; and that statement was: 'No n______ ever stayed overnight in this town.' (You know the "n" word.)
"My parents didn't particularly promote that statement. They were neutral about it, and I thought that I was not affected by it. I thought that I was fairly free of any kind of prejudice. I grew up, went on to high school and college. In college, the janitor in our dormitory was a negro, liked and respected by everyone on campus, including me. So, I went on assuring myself that I was free of any kind of racial bias.
"After we married, my wife and I came to Milwaukee, and in due course, we became chairpersons of the Commission on Christian Social Concerns in this church. As a part of our responsibility to the commission, my wife suggested that maybe it would be a good idea for us to visit one of the African-American United Methodist churches in Milwaukee. I agreed to it without any major reservations.
"So one Sunday morning we went down to one of the black neighborhoods. We parked our car and walked over to the church, about a block away. And I found myself struck by a tremendous sense of dread. It's nothing I can put a name to, even now. It was just a dread I felt of going into that church. It amazed me, because I still didn't think of myself as prejudiced. But if I had had any kind of excuse with which I could have saved face, I would have turned around and gone back home. But my wife didn't let that happen! She took my arm and we went on into that church, where we were accepted like long-lost kinfolk.
"Well, that's the story of how I became aware of the fact that I had been tainted by the racism I grew up with: that I had carried around an internal bias that I had not even been conscious of. Having a spotlight shone on something in yourself that you don't like is very helpful in taking steps to remedy it. One thing I did was to sing part-time in the negro church choir. Our church had two worship services, so it was easy for me to visit the African-American church and still attend my own congregation. And a few years later, my wife and I became members of the board of directors of Northcott Neighborhood House, just about four years after it was formed, and while it was in the process of trying to find its role in the African-American community in Milwaukee. We worked closely there, got well acquainted with many people, and one woman in particular became a close friend. She invited my wife and me to her home one week for Sunday dinner. And after dinner neighbors and friends came in and we had a delightful conversation. It wasn't until about 11:00, when the group broke up and we were getting in the car to go home, that I became conscious of the fact that my wife and I had been the only white people present." (from Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, 1996, pgs. 117-119)
It can be disconcerting to go into foreign territory. Strange places and strange peoples can bring out the worst of our fears and bad behavior. And strangely, it is in foreign territory that we often learn more about ourselves than anywhere else. Richard Rohr writes in Simplicity: The Art of Living (Crossroads, 1990) that to find a new way of life, "You have to leave the world where you have everything under control. You have to head into a world where you are poor and powerless. And there you will be converted in spite of yourself" (pg. 113).
Jesus is in foreign territory, and a "dirty foreigner" approaches him. The fact that she is a woman compounds the dilemma for Jesus. Jewish men were not to speak to women in public, even members of their own families, lest they risk making themselves unclean.
The Canaanite woman shouts at Jesus, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David." She addresses him as the Messiah; she knows exactly who he is, something that even the disciples were not yet clear about. She yells, "My daughter is tormented by a demon."
Jesus ignores her: "... he did not answer her at all." But he must have known that his little vacation was over. The disciples urge him to send her away because she won't stop her shouting. Jesus finally speaks: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
The woman is not deterred by this. She comes and kneels at his feet, the proper deferential position for a woman in this time and place. And she pleads with him, "Lord, help me."
Jesus responds in a manner that seems uncharacteristically harsh. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." This is a sharp rebuke. To suggest that someone is like a dog is not a compliment. But without missing a beat, the woman answers him. And I think she must have smiled as she said this. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang. The woman is good at repartee. She does to Jesus what he is so good at doing to the critics who dare to engage him in oral combat. Nowhere else in the Gospel accounts is there any report of anyone so clearly getting the best of Jesus. This Canaanite woman takes Jesus to school, and he knows it. What's even more surprising, Jesus not only gets it, he admits it. He does what all of us can learn to do when we are shown to be wrong. He graciously acknowledges the rightness of her position.
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' " Matthew writes, "And her daughter was healed instantly."
There are two miracles here. The first one is obvious and by itself no small thing. The demon that possessed this child, whatever it was, is gone. If you have ever loved a child who suffered from some debilitating, perhaps painful, illness, you know why this woman is willing to risk public humiliation to get help. She will do whatever is needed to make her daughter well. She has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Jesus heals this little girl, but clearly it would not have happened except for this mother's great love. In one of his study books, James Moore calls this "love with an attitude." He says the woman was bold and courageous because she lived by an attitude of love. She would not be put off. She would not be discouraged. She would not give up. "Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things. Love never ends." Long before the apostle Paul penned these words, this Canaanite woman lived them.
The second miracle in this story of healing is even more significant. Jesus' immediate response to the Canaanite woman is tribal. "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
We are all members of a tribe first. Who you are related to counts for something in this world. My Uncle Theron hired me to work for him in his milk-testing lab when I was in college, not because I was more qualified than a dozen or so others he could have hired, but because I was his sister's son. He preferred to pay someone in his own family even though he might have found someone more qualified than me. I loved him for that then, and I love him for it now. Families take care of their own. Blood is thicker than water and everything else. How many wars have been fought, how many millions have died in our world because of this? In 1994, 800,000 persons from the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda were murdered by members of the Hutu tribe, who were then in power. "Ethnic cleansing" we now call this, bad blood between neighbors which begins with simple disagreements about religion and who owns what territory, and ends in a bloodbath. Witness Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, and Palestine, to name just a few of the places where ethnic tensions have erupted in violence again and again. One wonders where God is in these places, why it seems that God cannot be heard or is not known in these bleeding hearts.
Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." The Canaanite woman speaks with the voice of God to the Son of God (is that possible?) when she says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."
In 1988 one of this Canaanite woman's descendants was on trial in Israel for "incitement and possession of inciting materials," having illegal books and tapes in the library of the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Family, for which she served as president. Samiha Khalil was known at that time as the most powerful woman on the West Bank. Her Palestinian neighbors affectionately called her "Khalil Umm Khalil" (Aunt Umm Khalil). "But perhaps the best way to describe Khalil is the way she described herself. 'I am Palestinian to the core. My wish before I die is to have a passport with the word "Palestinian" on it.' When the Israeli military governor of Khalil's district asked how she was one day, she responded dryly, 'God is with us.' Not to be outdone, the governor responded, 'No, he is with us.' Without blinking an eye, Khalil shot back, 'God was with you, but he is beginning to correct his mistake' " (The Christian Century, November 23, 1988). Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang!
Last month, a 13-member delegation sponsored by the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church conducted a fact-finding tour of the Middle East. These 13 American Christians in foreign territory were taken aback by what they saw and heard. It was a very different perspective than that provided by the American news media.
Nelda Reid of Dallas said now she understands how destruction of Palestinian croplands and damage to water supplies creates hardships in Arab communities. "Their lives are on hold, at the command of the Israeli army," she said. Bob Hughes of Seattle said he heard the word "suffocation" used to describe the conditions. "It's collective punishment for an entire community," he added.
During the visit the delegation spent the night of July 27 in farmers' homes in a Palestinian village. Les Solomon, of Alexandria, Virginia, noted that despite his extensive travels to other parts of the world, "I have never experienced the levels of repression on a people that I experienced during the visit. Its basic intent is to break the will of the Palestinian people by breaking their spirit" (from United Methodist News Service as printed in Newscope, August 9, 2002).
Esther Armstrong and Dale Stitt of Portland, Oregon, have an ecumenical ministry called Journey Into Freedom that, among other things, sponsors what they call "Trips of Perspective." Esther wrote in their newsletter of a "wonderfully disturbing" trip to Haiti where they met some of the poorest of the poor. They heard stories of starving people so hungry they are forced to eat emaciated dogs and donkeys, and of schoolchildren in Port-au-Prince swallowing stones to assuage hunger pangs due to poverty. Why do they go? Esther says, "We go on our Trips of Perspective not to fix the problems, to have answers, or even to make a difference. We go to be present, to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti, to confront our real powerlessness in the face of dire need, and to be transformed." (Journey Into Freedom, 4620 SW Caldew St, Unit E, Portland, OR 97219-1573, http://www.journeyintofreedom.org/)
What have you learned in a foreign territory that you could not have learned anywhere else?
Christina Berry of Sandia Park, New Mexico, tells the story of a dear friend whose eldest son, age 31, died unexpectedly in early June in a city on the west coast. As she and her husband were planning to travel there to attend a memorial service his friends and partner had arranged and to collect his things, she told me that her husband did not know their son was gay. The relationship had been strained in the past, and we were sure the father, a really traditional guy, would not handle this information well. "How could he not know?" I asked. "Are you going to tell him?" She said that she would wait and see. There was so much to deal with that we never had a chance to talk again before they left. Amid much chaos and grief, they left home. On the plane she said something in passing about their son and his roommate. Her husband answered, referring to the roommate as the son's partner.
My friend said, "Where did you learn that?"
"Well, he told me."
"What did he say?"
The father related what the son had told him.
"When did you find out?" the mother asked, shocked.
"Two years ago, that time I was in the hospital."
"Why didn't you say anything to me?"
The father looked surprised. "Didn't you know?" he asked. She was so relieved she didn't have more to say.
When they arrived at the home of their son's friend, where the memorial service was being held, the first person they saw was the son's partner. My friend said that her big macho husband looked at this bereft young man, then went to him and enfolded him in his arms, and said, "Thank you for loving my son." And the two of them wept together.
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly."
(From a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee on August 18, 2002.)
With thanks to Christina Berry for the concluding story and to Esther Armstrong for material gleaned from the Journey Into Freedom newsletter. For information about how to subscribe to Journey Into Freedom click here: http://www.journeyintofreedom.org/
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New Book Released
We are happy to report that the second volume in the vision series, Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences , is now available from CSS Publishing Company. You can see what the book looks like by going to the home page of the CSS website http://www.csspub.com. Then click on the cover of the book to get more information.
Special Pricing for StoryShare Subscribers
Sharing Visions retails for $19.95. CSS has graciously agreed to make the book available to StoryShare subscribers for just $11.97 (plus shipping & handling). To take advantage of this special pricing, you must use the special code SS40SV. 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.
Practical Ministry Tool
I found the first volume of Vision Stories to be a great tool for ministry. I give a copy to each family after a funeral, and to each couple after a wedding. I give copies to people who come in for counseling and are searching for God's presence, seeking comfort or assurance. And I have given the book to many people who have visions and have wondered if they dared to tell anyone. I also make the books available to the congregation at my cost.
I am willing to come to your community to do a book signing, tell vision stories, or do a vision seminar if you will take a free will offering to cover travel expenses.
Collecting Personal Stories of "Holy Moments"
We are collecting personal stories for a third volume in the vision series, to be released in 2004. The working title is Holy Moments: Life-Changing Visions and Other Signs of God's Presence. If you have any stories to share of your personal experience of the holy, please send them to jsumwalt@naspa.net
Praise For Sharing Visions
Bishop Richard Wilke, creator of the Disciple Bible Study series, writes: "I am rejoicing as I read the testimonies in Sharing Visions . What an inspiration! I recall my father, an unemotional man, telling me that his mother (who had died some years before) appeared to him in a dream and gave him counsel on a difficult decision he was wrestling with."
To learn more about John and Jo Sumwalt, visit their church website: http://www.waumc.org Click on "staff" for bios and photos.
StoryShare, September 7, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 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.
A Story to Live By: "Honor the Poor"
Good Stories: "A Glass of Milk"
Sharing Visions: "Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha" by Allan McCauley (as told to Rebecca Coan Henderleiter)
Scrap Pile: "Foreign Territory" by John Sumwalt
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On Being Poor
I grew up "poor" -- or so I thought. My siblings and I wore hand-me-downs from our better-off cousins in the city, and we were glad to get them. There was one Christmas, just after our family moved to a new farm, when we were the recipients of a Christmas basket of fruit, candy, cookies, and a turkey from a charity group in our county. There was rarely extra money for luxuries like restaurants, movies, or vacations. I didn't stay in a motel until I was 16, and then only because I won a regional wrestling tournament and my school paid for a room so I could compete in the sectional in a distant town. After I won the sectionals and earned the honor of going to the state tournament in Madison, I was very self-conscious about being the only wrestler there who didn't have proper "wrestling" shoes. I wore an old pair of black and white canvas shoes. It proved to be one of the richest experiences of my young life, despite the embarrassing shoes and the fact that I was eliminated by a pin in the first round.
It was on a trip to Mississippi in 1970, the summer after my freshman year in college, that I learned what it really meant to be "poor" in America. I went with a group called Project Understanding as part of a cultural exchange program. We stayed in the homes of rural African-Americans (although that is not a term used at that time) in Marshall and Carroll Counties. I was in "foreign territory," like Jesus was when he ventured into the realm of the Syrophoenician woman (see the Scrap Pile offering below) .
When the bus pulled up at a small shack of a house outside Holly Springs, we were greeted by children with distended stomachs protruding from their ragged clothes. It was a condition caused by an inadequate diet and a lack of money to pay for the operation needed to correct the disfigurement. Inside the house the stench of urine-soaked dirt came up through large cracks in the floors. I wanted to get back on the bus and go home. I had no choice but to stay and receive one of the greatest blessings of my life in eight days of living in real poverty with some of the most courageous, spirit-filled people I have ever known. I met leaders who risked their lives in the early days of the civil rights movement, who were beaten and jailed and were the first people with black skin to register and vote in their communities. Our group worshiped in a country church where few white people had worshiped before, and afterwards we were served some of the best food I've ever tasted. It was a life-changing, perhaps a life-saving, experience. I was never the same after that, thank God!
I invite you to send your personal stories of life-changing moments in "foreign territory." Write to us directly at jsumwalt@naspa.net
John Sumwalt
Co-Editor of StoryShare
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A Story to Live By
Honor the Poor
Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?
James 2:5b
Thomas Lynch, an undertaker and author from Milford, Michigan, tells of a priest he called to bury an indigent man:
... a man without family or friends or finances. He, the gravediggers, and I carried the casket to the grave. The priest incensed the body, blessed it with holy water, and read from the liturgy for 20 minutes, then sang In Paridisum -- that gorgeous Latin for "May the angels lead you into Paradise" -- as we lowered the poor man's body into the ground. When I asked him why he'd gone to such trouble, he said these are the most important funerals -- even if only God is watching -- because it affirms the agreement between "all God's children" that we will witness, remember, and take care of each other.
(from "Good Grief: An Undertaker's Reflections" by Thomas Lynch, Christian Century, July 26, 2003, pg. 23. Lynch's latest book is The Undertaking: Bodies in Motion and at Rest. For more information about Thomas Lynch, click http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/lynch1739-des-.html)
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Good Stories
A Glass of Milk
Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause ...
Proverbs 22:22-23a
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
James 2:14-17
One day, a poor boy who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school found he had only one thin dime left, and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry, so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, "How much do I owe you?"
"You don't owe me anything," she replied. "Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness."
He said, "Then I thank you from my heart."
As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strong also. He had been ready to give up and quit.
Years later that young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease. Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation.
When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes. Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room. Dressed in his doctor's gown, he went in to see her. He recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to the case.
After a long struggle, the battle was won. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words:
PAID IN FULL WITH ONE GLASS OF MILK.
(Signed) Dr. Howard Kelly
Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: "Thank You, God, that Your love is shed abroad through human hearts and hands."
Note: This is one of those well-traveled stories -- its exact origin is unknown. As is often the case, someone fictionalized some of the details, but it is essentially a true event.
The truthorfiction.com website (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/oneglassofmilk.htm) states that Dr. Howard Kelly was a distinguished physician who in 1895 founded the division of Gynecologic Oncology at Johns Hopkins University. According to Dr. Kelly's biographer, Audrey Davis, the doctor was on a walking trip through northern Pennsylvania one spring day when he stopped by a farmhouse for a drink of water. A little girl answered his knock at the door, and instead of water brought him a glass of fresh milk. He visited with her briefly, then went on his way. Sometime after that, the little girl came to him as a patient and needed surgery. After the surgery, the bill was brought to her room and on it were the words "Paid in full with one glass of milk."
Dr. Kelly was quite a colorful character -- in addition to being a skilled surgeon who invented numerous medical devices, he was a reptile collector and a bible-thumping Christian who read the good book in the original Greek and Hebrew and called a prayer meeting before every operation. You can read more about him at http://www.mostlyweb.com/portfolio/hopkins/jhPages/kelly.html.
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Sharing Visions
Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
by Allan McCauley (as told to Rebecca Coan Henderleiter)
Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
Mark 7:34-35
Peter, our 4-year-old son, was suffering from chronic otitis media, a disease of the middle ear that was causing him to go deaf. Two specialists, Dr. Besserman and Dr. Barnett, concurred that the only option to save Peter's hearing would be to surgically implant tubes in his ears. After the surgery, Peter would no longer be allowed to go swimming, which devastated him because he loved the water so much. Living in Arizona, swimming was a part of everyday activities in order to escape the summer heat.
At that time, my wife Marlene and I were involved in setting up lectures in Arizona churches by Rev. Francis X. Weiser, S.J., who had just published a book on the life of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk-Algonquin virgin who lived between 1656 and 1680. She had been declared "Venerable" by Pope Pius XII in 1943 and "Blessed" by Pope John Paul II in 1980, the first two steps toward sainthood. She will be the first Native American saint.
One day when Peter, Marlene, and I were picking up Father Weiser at the airport, we were speaking very loudly, nearly shouting, so that Peter could hear our conversation. "Why are you yelling?" Father Weiser asked.
"Our son has a serious ear problem and is nearly deaf," I explained.
"Deafness?" the Father said in his thick German accent. "Then let us ask Kateri to help! She leaves no prayer unanswered!"
We began a 9-day novena asking Kateri's intercession, as the Father had instructed. On the ninth day, April 17, 1973, the feast of Kateri's death, Marlene and I were making plans for Peter's upcoming surgery. I asked her a question, and much to my surprise, Peter responded! This was amazing! We had been speaking in normal tones that he couldn't hear. I took Peter to the back of the house, away from noise, covered his ears one at a time, and whispered. He could hear me perfectly.
We returned to his physicians, who affirmed that his hearing was completely restored. Peter has perfect hearing, and to this day has not had any recurrence. In fact, he returned to swimming the very day of that doctor's examination, and continues to enjoy water sports with not even the slightest of problems.
Peter recently obtained a master's degree in molecular biology and is now a second-year law student at the University of Houston. He plans to combine medicine with law, and is awaiting word on his application to medical school, which he will attend upon graduation from law school. His healing is one of many attributed to Kateri in the depository at the Vatican. We never received official word that it was accepted as a miracle, as one of our doctors refused to cooperate with the Vatican. He believed that medicine prescribed could have been responsible for the healing, however Peter never took that medicine. He hated it and spit it out whenever Marlene tried to give it to him. Dr. Barnett said he had no medical explanation whatsoever for the instant cure. Chronic middle ear problems resulting in deafness do not heal instantly under any circumstances.
In 1980, my family attended the beatification ceremony for the now Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. Sitting next to us was a man reading The Sunday Visitor. Much to our surprise, Peter's photo was on the front page with the large headline "Peter Returns to Rome to Thank Kateri!"
We continue lectures on Blessed Kateri and pray for the day that another undisputed miracle is attributed to her intercession, so that she may be known as Saint Kateri Tekakwitha.
Allan and Marlene McCauley live in Phoenix, Arizona, where Allan has practiced trial law for thirty years. Marlene is an artist and the author of Adventures with a Saint: Kateri Tekakwitha, "Lily of the Mohawks" and Whitey from Heaven: A Wondrous Cat. Both of them lecture on Kateri. As an avocation, Allan, Marlene, and their six children for many years performed puppet shows all over the U.S. as "The McCauley Family Theater."
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Scrap Pile
Foreign Territory
by John Sumwalt
The following is from a sermon based on Matthew's version of the story of the Syrophoenician woman (see Matthew 15:21-28).
Seeking to avoid the crowds that surrounded him everywhere he went in Israel, Jesus leaves the country for a little R&R. Tyre and Sidon were in Phoenicia, a region in Syria which stretched north between Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea.
This is foreign territory, a dangerous place for a Jew to be. The Phoenicians are of Canaanite stock, the ancestral enemies of the Jews, the forbearers of the people we know as Palestinians today. To Jews in Jesus' time, all non-Jews (that is, all gentiles) were considered to be unclean. Anyone who did not keep the Jewish cleanliness laws was by definition "dirty." A Jew was to have nothing to do with anyone who was unclean.
Have you heard the expression "dirty foreigner"? Some of us have grown up in families who were called that when we emigrated here from another part of the world. My own Irish ancestors, my mother's people, the Longs of Longfield (in Tipperary), who came to Wisconsin in the 1850s during the potato famine, were called that and worse. I believe "dirty micks" was the most common expression of derision. Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Hispanic, Asian, African, Indian, Scandinavian, Native American, Arab, and Jew -- we have all had our turn as a despised minority in Wisconsin.
I am sad to say that in my childhood I heard members of my own extended family refer to African-Americans as "dirty." When I was in high school our family was a part of an exchange program with a county in Mississippi. An eleven-year-old African-American girl named Linda Gulledge came to stay with us for three weeks. One of our relatives was quite distressed about this. She said to my mother, "Aren't you worried about her blackness rubbing off on the sheets?" She was very serious.
That is an attitude born of fear and ignorance, a learned social prejudice which has no basis in fact but is as common in our time as it was in first-century Israel.
Some of you remember the late Larry Wasson, a longtime member of this congregation who used to tell about his racist upbringing in a little coal-mining town in the foothills of the Ozarks in Arkansas. Larry said:
"One of the high points of the history of this little town, its sense of its importance, was a simple statement that floated around the community almost like an ambiance; and that statement was: 'No n______ ever stayed overnight in this town.' (You know the "n" word.)
"My parents didn't particularly promote that statement. They were neutral about it, and I thought that I was not affected by it. I thought that I was fairly free of any kind of prejudice. I grew up, went on to high school and college. In college, the janitor in our dormitory was a negro, liked and respected by everyone on campus, including me. So, I went on assuring myself that I was free of any kind of racial bias.
"After we married, my wife and I came to Milwaukee, and in due course, we became chairpersons of the Commission on Christian Social Concerns in this church. As a part of our responsibility to the commission, my wife suggested that maybe it would be a good idea for us to visit one of the African-American United Methodist churches in Milwaukee. I agreed to it without any major reservations.
"So one Sunday morning we went down to one of the black neighborhoods. We parked our car and walked over to the church, about a block away. And I found myself struck by a tremendous sense of dread. It's nothing I can put a name to, even now. It was just a dread I felt of going into that church. It amazed me, because I still didn't think of myself as prejudiced. But if I had had any kind of excuse with which I could have saved face, I would have turned around and gone back home. But my wife didn't let that happen! She took my arm and we went on into that church, where we were accepted like long-lost kinfolk.
"Well, that's the story of how I became aware of the fact that I had been tainted by the racism I grew up with: that I had carried around an internal bias that I had not even been conscious of. Having a spotlight shone on something in yourself that you don't like is very helpful in taking steps to remedy it. One thing I did was to sing part-time in the negro church choir. Our church had two worship services, so it was easy for me to visit the African-American church and still attend my own congregation. And a few years later, my wife and I became members of the board of directors of Northcott Neighborhood House, just about four years after it was formed, and while it was in the process of trying to find its role in the African-American community in Milwaukee. We worked closely there, got well acquainted with many people, and one woman in particular became a close friend. She invited my wife and me to her home one week for Sunday dinner. And after dinner neighbors and friends came in and we had a delightful conversation. It wasn't until about 11:00, when the group broke up and we were getting in the car to go home, that I became conscious of the fact that my wife and I had been the only white people present." (from Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, 1996, pgs. 117-119)
It can be disconcerting to go into foreign territory. Strange places and strange peoples can bring out the worst of our fears and bad behavior. And strangely, it is in foreign territory that we often learn more about ourselves than anywhere else. Richard Rohr writes in Simplicity: The Art of Living (Crossroads, 1990) that to find a new way of life, "You have to leave the world where you have everything under control. You have to head into a world where you are poor and powerless. And there you will be converted in spite of yourself" (pg. 113).
Jesus is in foreign territory, and a "dirty foreigner" approaches him. The fact that she is a woman compounds the dilemma for Jesus. Jewish men were not to speak to women in public, even members of their own families, lest they risk making themselves unclean.
The Canaanite woman shouts at Jesus, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David." She addresses him as the Messiah; she knows exactly who he is, something that even the disciples were not yet clear about. She yells, "My daughter is tormented by a demon."
Jesus ignores her: "... he did not answer her at all." But he must have known that his little vacation was over. The disciples urge him to send her away because she won't stop her shouting. Jesus finally speaks: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
The woman is not deterred by this. She comes and kneels at his feet, the proper deferential position for a woman in this time and place. And she pleads with him, "Lord, help me."
Jesus responds in a manner that seems uncharacteristically harsh. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." This is a sharp rebuke. To suggest that someone is like a dog is not a compliment. But without missing a beat, the woman answers him. And I think she must have smiled as she said this. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang. The woman is good at repartee. She does to Jesus what he is so good at doing to the critics who dare to engage him in oral combat. Nowhere else in the Gospel accounts is there any report of anyone so clearly getting the best of Jesus. This Canaanite woman takes Jesus to school, and he knows it. What's even more surprising, Jesus not only gets it, he admits it. He does what all of us can learn to do when we are shown to be wrong. He graciously acknowledges the rightness of her position.
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' " Matthew writes, "And her daughter was healed instantly."
There are two miracles here. The first one is obvious and by itself no small thing. The demon that possessed this child, whatever it was, is gone. If you have ever loved a child who suffered from some debilitating, perhaps painful, illness, you know why this woman is willing to risk public humiliation to get help. She will do whatever is needed to make her daughter well. She has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Jesus heals this little girl, but clearly it would not have happened except for this mother's great love. In one of his study books, James Moore calls this "love with an attitude." He says the woman was bold and courageous because she lived by an attitude of love. She would not be put off. She would not be discouraged. She would not give up. "Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things. Love never ends." Long before the apostle Paul penned these words, this Canaanite woman lived them.
The second miracle in this story of healing is even more significant. Jesus' immediate response to the Canaanite woman is tribal. "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
We are all members of a tribe first. Who you are related to counts for something in this world. My Uncle Theron hired me to work for him in his milk-testing lab when I was in college, not because I was more qualified than a dozen or so others he could have hired, but because I was his sister's son. He preferred to pay someone in his own family even though he might have found someone more qualified than me. I loved him for that then, and I love him for it now. Families take care of their own. Blood is thicker than water and everything else. How many wars have been fought, how many millions have died in our world because of this? In 1994, 800,000 persons from the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda were murdered by members of the Hutu tribe, who were then in power. "Ethnic cleansing" we now call this, bad blood between neighbors which begins with simple disagreements about religion and who owns what territory, and ends in a bloodbath. Witness Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, and Palestine, to name just a few of the places where ethnic tensions have erupted in violence again and again. One wonders where God is in these places, why it seems that God cannot be heard or is not known in these bleeding hearts.
Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." The Canaanite woman speaks with the voice of God to the Son of God (is that possible?) when she says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."
In 1988 one of this Canaanite woman's descendants was on trial in Israel for "incitement and possession of inciting materials," having illegal books and tapes in the library of the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Family, for which she served as president. Samiha Khalil was known at that time as the most powerful woman on the West Bank. Her Palestinian neighbors affectionately called her "Khalil Umm Khalil" (Aunt Umm Khalil). "But perhaps the best way to describe Khalil is the way she described herself. 'I am Palestinian to the core. My wish before I die is to have a passport with the word "Palestinian" on it.' When the Israeli military governor of Khalil's district asked how she was one day, she responded dryly, 'God is with us.' Not to be outdone, the governor responded, 'No, he is with us.' Without blinking an eye, Khalil shot back, 'God was with you, but he is beginning to correct his mistake' " (The Christian Century, November 23, 1988). Ba-da-bing, ba-da-bang!
Last month, a 13-member delegation sponsored by the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church conducted a fact-finding tour of the Middle East. These 13 American Christians in foreign territory were taken aback by what they saw and heard. It was a very different perspective than that provided by the American news media.
Nelda Reid of Dallas said now she understands how destruction of Palestinian croplands and damage to water supplies creates hardships in Arab communities. "Their lives are on hold, at the command of the Israeli army," she said. Bob Hughes of Seattle said he heard the word "suffocation" used to describe the conditions. "It's collective punishment for an entire community," he added.
During the visit the delegation spent the night of July 27 in farmers' homes in a Palestinian village. Les Solomon, of Alexandria, Virginia, noted that despite his extensive travels to other parts of the world, "I have never experienced the levels of repression on a people that I experienced during the visit. Its basic intent is to break the will of the Palestinian people by breaking their spirit" (from United Methodist News Service as printed in Newscope, August 9, 2002).
Esther Armstrong and Dale Stitt of Portland, Oregon, have an ecumenical ministry called Journey Into Freedom that, among other things, sponsors what they call "Trips of Perspective." Esther wrote in their newsletter of a "wonderfully disturbing" trip to Haiti where they met some of the poorest of the poor. They heard stories of starving people so hungry they are forced to eat emaciated dogs and donkeys, and of schoolchildren in Port-au-Prince swallowing stones to assuage hunger pangs due to poverty. Why do they go? Esther says, "We go on our Trips of Perspective not to fix the problems, to have answers, or even to make a difference. We go to be present, to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti, to confront our real powerlessness in the face of dire need, and to be transformed." (Journey Into Freedom, 4620 SW Caldew St, Unit E, Portland, OR 97219-1573, http://www.journeyintofreedom.org/)
What have you learned in a foreign territory that you could not have learned anywhere else?
Christina Berry of Sandia Park, New Mexico, tells the story of a dear friend whose eldest son, age 31, died unexpectedly in early June in a city on the west coast. As she and her husband were planning to travel there to attend a memorial service his friends and partner had arranged and to collect his things, she told me that her husband did not know their son was gay. The relationship had been strained in the past, and we were sure the father, a really traditional guy, would not handle this information well. "How could he not know?" I asked. "Are you going to tell him?" She said that she would wait and see. There was so much to deal with that we never had a chance to talk again before they left. Amid much chaos and grief, they left home. On the plane she said something in passing about their son and his roommate. Her husband answered, referring to the roommate as the son's partner.
My friend said, "Where did you learn that?"
"Well, he told me."
"What did he say?"
The father related what the son had told him.
"When did you find out?" the mother asked, shocked.
"Two years ago, that time I was in the hospital."
"Why didn't you say anything to me?"
The father looked surprised. "Didn't you know?" he asked. She was so relieved she didn't have more to say.
When they arrived at the home of their son's friend, where the memorial service was being held, the first person they saw was the son's partner. My friend said that her big macho husband looked at this bereft young man, then went to him and enfolded him in his arms, and said, "Thank you for loving my son." And the two of them wept together.
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly."
(From a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee on August 18, 2002.)
With thanks to Christina Berry for the concluding story and to Esther Armstrong for material gleaned from the Journey Into Freedom newsletter. For information about how to subscribe to Journey Into Freedom click here: http://www.journeyintofreedom.org/
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New Book Released
We are happy to report that the second volume in the vision series, Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences , is now available from CSS Publishing Company. You can see what the book looks like by going to the home page of the CSS website http://www.csspub.com. Then click on the cover of the book to get more information.
Special Pricing for StoryShare Subscribers
Sharing Visions retails for $19.95. CSS has graciously agreed to make the book available to StoryShare subscribers for just $11.97 (plus shipping & handling). To take advantage of this special pricing, you must use the special code SS40SV. 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.
Practical Ministry Tool
I found the first volume of Vision Stories to be a great tool for ministry. I give a copy to each family after a funeral, and to each couple after a wedding. I give copies to people who come in for counseling and are searching for God's presence, seeking comfort or assurance. And I have given the book to many people who have visions and have wondered if they dared to tell anyone. I also make the books available to the congregation at my cost.
I am willing to come to your community to do a book signing, tell vision stories, or do a vision seminar if you will take a free will offering to cover travel expenses.
Collecting Personal Stories of "Holy Moments"
We are collecting personal stories for a third volume in the vision series, to be released in 2004. The working title is Holy Moments: Life-Changing Visions and Other Signs of God's Presence. If you have any stories to share of your personal experience of the holy, please send them to jsumwalt@naspa.net
Praise For Sharing Visions
Bishop Richard Wilke, creator of the Disciple Bible Study series, writes: "I am rejoicing as I read the testimonies in Sharing Visions . What an inspiration! I recall my father, an unemotional man, telling me that his mother (who had died some years before) appeared to him in a dream and gave him counsel on a difficult decision he was wrestling with."
To learn more about John and Jo Sumwalt, visit their church website: http://www.waumc.org Click on "staff" for bios and photos.
StoryShare, September 7, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 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.
