Hope Does Not Disappoint
Stories
Contents
"Hope Does not Disappoint" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Trouble" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
Hope Does not Disappoint
by Peter Andrew Smith
Romans 5:1-11
There once was a seed that grew on a branch of a towering tree. The seed loved its life, hanging high enough to feel the touch of the sun, the kiss of the rain, and the dance of the wind. When it was quiet and calm the seed listened as the tree whispered truths about the world. Some of those things the seed understood like the role of the sun and the rain in giving life. Yet when the tree spoke of suffering and pain, or endurance and hope the seed did not understand. All it wanted to do was play in the sun and enjoy life high above the world.
The wind arose one day and the seed stretched in the breeze. One of the joys of being a seed growing from a branch was being able to sway and move as the air pushed and pulled while still remaining connected to the rest of the tree. As it thrilled in the movement of the air the seed felt sorry for the trunk and the branches that could not move as freely. The seed listened to the leaves as they sang with the wind around them and believed that life could not be any better.
That day though, the connection, the thin tie that kept the seed anchored to the tree began to give way. The seed struggled to hold on but the wind blew harder and harder. The small part of the seed that touched the branch, the same part that gave it the freedom to move with the air while never leaving the tree, broke and the seed tumbled out of control.
The wind pushed the seed up and down away from the safety of the familiar branches and into the unknown. Everything was a blur as the seed first lifted up to the heights of the air to see things that it never knew existed. Then the wind stopped and the seed crashed into the cold dark embrace of the earth.
Away from the warmth of the sunlight, separated from the familiar the seed longed to return to the branch and the life it had always known. It pleaded with the wind to dig it out and lift it back to the tree. When nothing happened the seed screamed and cried in rage, frustration, and fear. Time passed.
The seed could no longer see the sun or feel the air but believed they still existed somewhere. It did not know when and could not imagine how but trusted that one day it would return to dance in the wind and feel the rain. More time passed.
Alone and apart from all the good things it had known, the seed realized that while it enjoyed the sun and the air around it what it really missed was the tree. The connection to something larger, the life that flowed to it, the knowledge that it was not alone and those were the things that it truly longed to experience again. The seed remembered the whispered words about faith and hope that the tree had shared and tried to make sense of them. Still more time passed.
The seed felt itself slowly changing. The moist earth surrounding it no longer seemed so cold and uninviting. The seed spread itself out and begin to draw what it needed from its surrounding. As it did so it felt a longing, a desire, to move. It stretched beyond where it was and little by little, over the days and weeks that passed it moved up toward the surface.
When the day came that it broke through the ground and the sun kissed it with warmth and the air moved around it playfully the seed did not stop. It continued to push up to the sky even as it reached down into the earth. It stretched up, down, and outward over the months and years that passed. One day it was amazed to see it was no longer a small seed but had a trunk and branches and leaves. The seed had grown into a tree.
Soon small seeds began to appear on its branches and as they played in the wind and enjoyed the sunshine and the splash of rain the seed that had grown into the tree told them its story. The seeds did not understand when it explained that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. Yet the seed, which was now a tree, did not worry about that for it trusted that when the time came they would remember and that would be enough for them to know God.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
Trouble
by Keith Hewitt
John 4:5-42
I knew he was trouble from the moment I saw him.
The lights were low, and the air smelled of draught beer, stale popcorn, and desperation. Chuck likes to say that he keeps the lights dim for "atmosphere," but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with being harder to spot lipstick stains on glasses, or the occasional what-not in the food. Truth be told, it doesn't hurt those of us who are on the far side of 25, either, which might explain the skewed female demographic on any given night.
Me? I have a soft spot for dollar taps and salty popcorn, and guys who live on them like they're manna from heaven.
So this guy comes in and sits at the far end of the bar, away from the street and close enough to the men's bathroom to get a piquant whiff of urinal cake every time somebody opened and closed the door. He was tallish, a little dumpy, but I've seen worse -- dated worse, in fact -- and had the sort of nondescript face you'd never look at twice, on the street. He sat for about fifteen minutes, just looking around, and nobody approached him, nobody even looked him in the eye.
I'm going to guess it was the white band of the clerical collar, beneath his regular shirt collar, that threw people off. I know it threw me off when I spotted it from my place at the jukebox, halfway across the room. I sat down with my back to the jukebox, absorbed the throbbing beat of Radar Love for a few minutes, all the while eyeing the newcomer... and still nobody approached him, even as he casually looked over everyone in the room.
Then -- almost as though he could sense me looking at him -- his head swiveled and he looked directly at me, gave a little smile and a slight nod of the head that looked like an invitation in my book. I smiled back, stood up, and wove through the tables to the bar, adjusting this and that as I walked. Maybe it's some kind of role playing thing, I thought, as I pulled out the stool next to his and stepped up onto it. I leaned toward him slightly, said quietly, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
His eyes twinkled. "Haven't we all?" he sighed. "Who do you have to know to get something to drink around here?"
I smiled. "I might be able to help you out." I caught Chuck's eye, at the other end of the bar, and called him down with a quick toss of my head. Chuck approached with the eagerness of a man about to defuse a ticking bomb, looked at me and furrowed his brow, his eyes asking me what I was doing here. I ignored the question. "A light for myself and a --" I turned to the stranger. "What'll you have, Father?"
"Coke, neat," he said to Chuck, who just rolled his eyes and snagged two pretty clean glasses off the shelf under the bar. As our drinks were prepared, the stranger added, "And thank you, but I'm not a priest." I must have looked puzzled, because he explained, "I'm not 'Father.' "
"Oh -- sorry."
"Don't be. It is a clergy collar, but I wanted to clarify that I'm not a priest."
"But you are a pastor?"
"I am."
"Then what should I call you?"
He considered this for a moment and then shrugged. "Bob would work."
Our drinks came, then; I slid across money for the beer and soda -- not full price. Chuck and I have an understanding… I can drink for cost, as long as I can keep patrons ordering rounds at full price. This works out surprisingly well, when I have a talker on the hook; even better late at night, when a little extra water seems to find its way into the glasses. It cuts down my cost of doing business, and keeps everyone happy. Chuck gave me the eye and shook his head, once, to say that this one wasn't going to go anywhere. I shrugged it off, turned back to the stranger and raised my glass. "Prost!"
He raised his, touched it against my glass with a clink. "Prost!" He took a sip, testing the soda, shrugged and took a healthy gulp -- winced a little as he swallowed. "Now that's a little past its prime," he muttered, not loud enough for anyone but me to hear.
I just smiled. Chuck hates to waste anything, and soft drinks aren't a big mover; I wouldn't be surprised to find out the Coke was from his Y2K stash.
"So, Bob, what brings a man like you to a place like this?"
He leaned back on the stool, slowly twirled the glass in his hand. "Oh, I don't know. Seemed like an interesting place, from the outside." Pause. "And I suppose I was looking for someone to talk to."
It can be a delicate dance... some guys are straight up, and you know what they want from the first word; others like to edge their way up to it, like they're sidling up to the edge of a cliff; then there's the occasional guy that seems to want -- or need -- to be talked into it. Like Ben Franklin said, "Time is money." The longer the dance lasted, the higher the laws of economics pushed the price.
I leaned forward, touched his knee lightly. "Well, that happens to be one of my specialties, Bob."
He smiled slightly, covered my hand briefly with his -- then gently moved it to the top of the bar. "I imagine it is," he said simply, but between his expression and the way he moved my hand, and the way he said it -- I was suddenly uncomfortable, in a way I'd never experienced before. Not in a situation like this.
They tell you to trust your instincts -- and mine were standing up and screaming. I tried not to let it show on my face, just shrugged and turned slightly on the stool, started to step down and said, "You know, maybe this isn't a good idea."
"Oh, come on, at least let me buy you a round -- return the favor." Without waiting for a response, he beckoned to Chuck and said, "Barkeep -- another Coke for me, and another of whatever my friend was having." He took bills out of his pocket and slid them across -- full price.
I let myself be persuaded to stay.
When our drinks came, he didn't even sample his, just said, "You've had a kind of a hard life, haven't you?"
Discomfort wrestled with curiosity; I finally just said, "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's dinner time, and here you are, in this establishment -- not that there's anything wrong with it," he added hastily. "It's just that most women your age have a husband and family to spend time with. Or at least a steady boyfriend. I get the feeling you don't have either."
"Well," I said carefully, studying the head of my beer as I sloshed it around the glass, "to be honest, Bob, I've tried both. They didn't appeal to me. I'm more of a footloose and fancy free kind of girl. You know."
He smiled. "I think I do." He looked at me, calculating, for a couple of seconds. Then he stirred in his stool and said, "You didn't get what you thought you should out of those relationships, so now you sustain yourself with lots of, shall we say, short term relationships. And a plentiful supply of beer."
"Well, now, I don't know about 'lots,' and I think plentiful may be a little loaded." I squirmed, acutely aware that I was uneasy -- and yet, something about this guy made me want to stay.
"Point taken," he said graciously, with a slight bow of his head. "Let's just say that your relationships tend to be of a more transient nature."
"I like that. Sounds a lot less trashy."
"Then we'll go with that. Transient relationships and ever-present beer."
"Fair enough. But I have switched to light in the last couple of years. You know, to keep my girlish figure."
"I don't believe you have anything to worry about, there."
"A compliment! Thank you, Bob."
"I meant it. You're an attractive young woman. And smart and personable. So why is it, do you think, that you haven't gotten what you want out of life?"
I pondered this while I drained my glass, set it down carefully. "What makes you think I haven't?" I asked finally.
He raised his eyebrows. "Have you?" He looked around, swept the bar with his eyes and then looked back at me. "This place -- is this where you want to live out your life? Is it what you want?"
I shrugged. "It makes me happy."
"Sure -- but for how long?"
"What do you mean?"
"A little beer may quench your thirst for the moment, or one of your dates may fill whatever need -- for the moment. But it never lasts, does it? I mean, not for very long. Because soon enough, you're back here, doing it all again."
"Have you been stalking me, Bob?"
He shook his head. "No, I just have a pretty good idea of the life you lead. You spend your life chasing the next high, the next payday -- and you pretend it satisfies you, but it doesn't. Not really."
"You sure do think you know me," I said slowly.
"If I'm wrong, just tell me to back off," he offered, "But if I'm right -- if I'm right, then maybe you'll want to do something about it."
"Look, just for the sake of argument, suppose you're right. What makes you think I deserve any better? I'm nothing special. Why shouldn't I just struggle through life, grabbing the occasional stray bit of happiness where I can find it?"
"Do you really think that?"
I shrugged. "It makes sense to me. There's what, six billion of us on this planet? I don't see any stars or rainbows hanging over my head."
"Then if that's what you really think, why don't you come out to me car with me?" he asked, after a moment's pause.
Now, I've seen Silence of the Lambs I know better. But all I could think was... Finally! I smiled, slid off the stool. "I thought you'd never ask, Bob."
I let him lead me to his car. When we got there he unlocked it, opened the passenger door -- but instead of letting me get in, he just leaned in and picked up something from the front seat, turned and held it out to me. "I want you to have this," he said.
I looked at it -- a thick, black book. I didn't need to see the gold lettering on the front to know what it was. "A Bible?"
"Don't think of it as a Bible," he said. "Think of it as a thousand pages of proof that you are somebody special. Read it, and you'll know the truth -- the real truth. I'm not judging -- but I can tell you that whatever goes on in there --" he inclined his head toward Chuck's place, "-- will never fill you up the way God's love can. It'll never heal you the way God can."
"But I'm not --" I began, then trailed off.
"Special?" he finished the thought, then smiled gently. "Read this, and you'll know. A long time ago Christ died for you -- for you -- so how could you not be special?"
I took the book from his hand. It seemed heavy. "I don't know."
"You will," he said confidently. "God's love can fill you up -- you just have to let it."
And with just another word or two, he left… left me standing on the sidewalk, Bible in hand, wondering what I should do next. To tell you the truth, I'm a little bit scared -- if I really am special, if my thirst for love and acceptance really is quenched by what I learn... then I'm going to have to think about changing a few things. Sure, it might be worth it, but it's not going to be easy.
I knew he was trouble from the moment I saw him.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
*****************************************
StoryShare, March 27, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
"Hope Does not Disappoint" by Peter Andrew Smith
"Trouble" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
Hope Does not Disappoint
by Peter Andrew Smith
Romans 5:1-11
There once was a seed that grew on a branch of a towering tree. The seed loved its life, hanging high enough to feel the touch of the sun, the kiss of the rain, and the dance of the wind. When it was quiet and calm the seed listened as the tree whispered truths about the world. Some of those things the seed understood like the role of the sun and the rain in giving life. Yet when the tree spoke of suffering and pain, or endurance and hope the seed did not understand. All it wanted to do was play in the sun and enjoy life high above the world.
The wind arose one day and the seed stretched in the breeze. One of the joys of being a seed growing from a branch was being able to sway and move as the air pushed and pulled while still remaining connected to the rest of the tree. As it thrilled in the movement of the air the seed felt sorry for the trunk and the branches that could not move as freely. The seed listened to the leaves as they sang with the wind around them and believed that life could not be any better.
That day though, the connection, the thin tie that kept the seed anchored to the tree began to give way. The seed struggled to hold on but the wind blew harder and harder. The small part of the seed that touched the branch, the same part that gave it the freedom to move with the air while never leaving the tree, broke and the seed tumbled out of control.
The wind pushed the seed up and down away from the safety of the familiar branches and into the unknown. Everything was a blur as the seed first lifted up to the heights of the air to see things that it never knew existed. Then the wind stopped and the seed crashed into the cold dark embrace of the earth.
Away from the warmth of the sunlight, separated from the familiar the seed longed to return to the branch and the life it had always known. It pleaded with the wind to dig it out and lift it back to the tree. When nothing happened the seed screamed and cried in rage, frustration, and fear. Time passed.
The seed could no longer see the sun or feel the air but believed they still existed somewhere. It did not know when and could not imagine how but trusted that one day it would return to dance in the wind and feel the rain. More time passed.
Alone and apart from all the good things it had known, the seed realized that while it enjoyed the sun and the air around it what it really missed was the tree. The connection to something larger, the life that flowed to it, the knowledge that it was not alone and those were the things that it truly longed to experience again. The seed remembered the whispered words about faith and hope that the tree had shared and tried to make sense of them. Still more time passed.
The seed felt itself slowly changing. The moist earth surrounding it no longer seemed so cold and uninviting. The seed spread itself out and begin to draw what it needed from its surrounding. As it did so it felt a longing, a desire, to move. It stretched beyond where it was and little by little, over the days and weeks that passed it moved up toward the surface.
When the day came that it broke through the ground and the sun kissed it with warmth and the air moved around it playfully the seed did not stop. It continued to push up to the sky even as it reached down into the earth. It stretched up, down, and outward over the months and years that passed. One day it was amazed to see it was no longer a small seed but had a trunk and branches and leaves. The seed had grown into a tree.
Soon small seeds began to appear on its branches and as they played in the wind and enjoyed the sunshine and the splash of rain the seed that had grown into the tree told them its story. The seeds did not understand when it explained that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. Yet the seed, which was now a tree, did not worry about that for it trusted that when the time came they would remember and that would be enough for them to know God.
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
Trouble
by Keith Hewitt
John 4:5-42
I knew he was trouble from the moment I saw him.
The lights were low, and the air smelled of draught beer, stale popcorn, and desperation. Chuck likes to say that he keeps the lights dim for "atmosphere," but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with being harder to spot lipstick stains on glasses, or the occasional what-not in the food. Truth be told, it doesn't hurt those of us who are on the far side of 25, either, which might explain the skewed female demographic on any given night.
Me? I have a soft spot for dollar taps and salty popcorn, and guys who live on them like they're manna from heaven.
So this guy comes in and sits at the far end of the bar, away from the street and close enough to the men's bathroom to get a piquant whiff of urinal cake every time somebody opened and closed the door. He was tallish, a little dumpy, but I've seen worse -- dated worse, in fact -- and had the sort of nondescript face you'd never look at twice, on the street. He sat for about fifteen minutes, just looking around, and nobody approached him, nobody even looked him in the eye.
I'm going to guess it was the white band of the clerical collar, beneath his regular shirt collar, that threw people off. I know it threw me off when I spotted it from my place at the jukebox, halfway across the room. I sat down with my back to the jukebox, absorbed the throbbing beat of Radar Love for a few minutes, all the while eyeing the newcomer... and still nobody approached him, even as he casually looked over everyone in the room.
Then -- almost as though he could sense me looking at him -- his head swiveled and he looked directly at me, gave a little smile and a slight nod of the head that looked like an invitation in my book. I smiled back, stood up, and wove through the tables to the bar, adjusting this and that as I walked. Maybe it's some kind of role playing thing, I thought, as I pulled out the stool next to his and stepped up onto it. I leaned toward him slightly, said quietly, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
His eyes twinkled. "Haven't we all?" he sighed. "Who do you have to know to get something to drink around here?"
I smiled. "I might be able to help you out." I caught Chuck's eye, at the other end of the bar, and called him down with a quick toss of my head. Chuck approached with the eagerness of a man about to defuse a ticking bomb, looked at me and furrowed his brow, his eyes asking me what I was doing here. I ignored the question. "A light for myself and a --" I turned to the stranger. "What'll you have, Father?"
"Coke, neat," he said to Chuck, who just rolled his eyes and snagged two pretty clean glasses off the shelf under the bar. As our drinks were prepared, the stranger added, "And thank you, but I'm not a priest." I must have looked puzzled, because he explained, "I'm not 'Father.' "
"Oh -- sorry."
"Don't be. It is a clergy collar, but I wanted to clarify that I'm not a priest."
"But you are a pastor?"
"I am."
"Then what should I call you?"
He considered this for a moment and then shrugged. "Bob would work."
Our drinks came, then; I slid across money for the beer and soda -- not full price. Chuck and I have an understanding… I can drink for cost, as long as I can keep patrons ordering rounds at full price. This works out surprisingly well, when I have a talker on the hook; even better late at night, when a little extra water seems to find its way into the glasses. It cuts down my cost of doing business, and keeps everyone happy. Chuck gave me the eye and shook his head, once, to say that this one wasn't going to go anywhere. I shrugged it off, turned back to the stranger and raised my glass. "Prost!"
He raised his, touched it against my glass with a clink. "Prost!" He took a sip, testing the soda, shrugged and took a healthy gulp -- winced a little as he swallowed. "Now that's a little past its prime," he muttered, not loud enough for anyone but me to hear.
I just smiled. Chuck hates to waste anything, and soft drinks aren't a big mover; I wouldn't be surprised to find out the Coke was from his Y2K stash.
"So, Bob, what brings a man like you to a place like this?"
He leaned back on the stool, slowly twirled the glass in his hand. "Oh, I don't know. Seemed like an interesting place, from the outside." Pause. "And I suppose I was looking for someone to talk to."
It can be a delicate dance... some guys are straight up, and you know what they want from the first word; others like to edge their way up to it, like they're sidling up to the edge of a cliff; then there's the occasional guy that seems to want -- or need -- to be talked into it. Like Ben Franklin said, "Time is money." The longer the dance lasted, the higher the laws of economics pushed the price.
I leaned forward, touched his knee lightly. "Well, that happens to be one of my specialties, Bob."
He smiled slightly, covered my hand briefly with his -- then gently moved it to the top of the bar. "I imagine it is," he said simply, but between his expression and the way he moved my hand, and the way he said it -- I was suddenly uncomfortable, in a way I'd never experienced before. Not in a situation like this.
They tell you to trust your instincts -- and mine were standing up and screaming. I tried not to let it show on my face, just shrugged and turned slightly on the stool, started to step down and said, "You know, maybe this isn't a good idea."
"Oh, come on, at least let me buy you a round -- return the favor." Without waiting for a response, he beckoned to Chuck and said, "Barkeep -- another Coke for me, and another of whatever my friend was having." He took bills out of his pocket and slid them across -- full price.
I let myself be persuaded to stay.
When our drinks came, he didn't even sample his, just said, "You've had a kind of a hard life, haven't you?"
Discomfort wrestled with curiosity; I finally just said, "What do you mean?"
"I mean it's dinner time, and here you are, in this establishment -- not that there's anything wrong with it," he added hastily. "It's just that most women your age have a husband and family to spend time with. Or at least a steady boyfriend. I get the feeling you don't have either."
"Well," I said carefully, studying the head of my beer as I sloshed it around the glass, "to be honest, Bob, I've tried both. They didn't appeal to me. I'm more of a footloose and fancy free kind of girl. You know."
He smiled. "I think I do." He looked at me, calculating, for a couple of seconds. Then he stirred in his stool and said, "You didn't get what you thought you should out of those relationships, so now you sustain yourself with lots of, shall we say, short term relationships. And a plentiful supply of beer."
"Well, now, I don't know about 'lots,' and I think plentiful may be a little loaded." I squirmed, acutely aware that I was uneasy -- and yet, something about this guy made me want to stay.
"Point taken," he said graciously, with a slight bow of his head. "Let's just say that your relationships tend to be of a more transient nature."
"I like that. Sounds a lot less trashy."
"Then we'll go with that. Transient relationships and ever-present beer."
"Fair enough. But I have switched to light in the last couple of years. You know, to keep my girlish figure."
"I don't believe you have anything to worry about, there."
"A compliment! Thank you, Bob."
"I meant it. You're an attractive young woman. And smart and personable. So why is it, do you think, that you haven't gotten what you want out of life?"
I pondered this while I drained my glass, set it down carefully. "What makes you think I haven't?" I asked finally.
He raised his eyebrows. "Have you?" He looked around, swept the bar with his eyes and then looked back at me. "This place -- is this where you want to live out your life? Is it what you want?"
I shrugged. "It makes me happy."
"Sure -- but for how long?"
"What do you mean?"
"A little beer may quench your thirst for the moment, or one of your dates may fill whatever need -- for the moment. But it never lasts, does it? I mean, not for very long. Because soon enough, you're back here, doing it all again."
"Have you been stalking me, Bob?"
He shook his head. "No, I just have a pretty good idea of the life you lead. You spend your life chasing the next high, the next payday -- and you pretend it satisfies you, but it doesn't. Not really."
"You sure do think you know me," I said slowly.
"If I'm wrong, just tell me to back off," he offered, "But if I'm right -- if I'm right, then maybe you'll want to do something about it."
"Look, just for the sake of argument, suppose you're right. What makes you think I deserve any better? I'm nothing special. Why shouldn't I just struggle through life, grabbing the occasional stray bit of happiness where I can find it?"
"Do you really think that?"
I shrugged. "It makes sense to me. There's what, six billion of us on this planet? I don't see any stars or rainbows hanging over my head."
"Then if that's what you really think, why don't you come out to me car with me?" he asked, after a moment's pause.
Now, I've seen Silence of the Lambs I know better. But all I could think was... Finally! I smiled, slid off the stool. "I thought you'd never ask, Bob."
I let him lead me to his car. When we got there he unlocked it, opened the passenger door -- but instead of letting me get in, he just leaned in and picked up something from the front seat, turned and held it out to me. "I want you to have this," he said.
I looked at it -- a thick, black book. I didn't need to see the gold lettering on the front to know what it was. "A Bible?"
"Don't think of it as a Bible," he said. "Think of it as a thousand pages of proof that you are somebody special. Read it, and you'll know the truth -- the real truth. I'm not judging -- but I can tell you that whatever goes on in there --" he inclined his head toward Chuck's place, "-- will never fill you up the way God's love can. It'll never heal you the way God can."
"But I'm not --" I began, then trailed off.
"Special?" he finished the thought, then smiled gently. "Read this, and you'll know. A long time ago Christ died for you -- for you -- so how could you not be special?"
I took the book from his hand. It seemed heavy. "I don't know."
"You will," he said confidently. "God's love can fill you up -- you just have to let it."
And with just another word or two, he left… left me standing on the sidewalk, Bible in hand, wondering what I should do next. To tell you the truth, I'm a little bit scared -- if I really am special, if my thirst for love and acceptance really is quenched by what I learn... then I'm going to have to think about changing a few things. Sure, it might be worth it, but it's not going to be easy.
I knew he was trouble from the moment I saw him.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
*****************************************
StoryShare, March 27, 2011, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
