How The Mighty Have Fallen
Stories
Object:
Contents
"How the Mighty Have Fallen" by John Sumwalt
"Death and Joy" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
How the Mighty Have Fallen
by John Sumwalt
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said: "Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen!"
-- 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-19
It was to be a brief sorrowful sermon that first Sunday in July before Independence Day. The altar guild had decorated the chancel with two large bouquets of red, white, and blue carnations. Attendance was light, typical of holiday weekend Sundays when many families were traveling or attending to backyard barbecues. The few faithful souls who always came sang "America the Beautiful" and "My Country Tis of Thee" with a gusto that belied their numbers.
The pastor was on vacation. Following the anthem a man who was unknown to the congregation rose up to preach. They had read in the bulletin that he was a lay person from a nearby town. No one recognized his name or knew anything about his family.
"My name is Roy Perkins," the unknown preacher said. "I went to grade school with your pastor. He has invited me to give the message on this Independence Day Sunday. I teach Sunday school in our little church over in New Haven. I am honored to be with you.
The preacher spoke slowly, in a soft voice barely audible to those in the back. And though his words were warm, his face looked grim and his tone was almost somber. If they had known Roy they would have known that this was not his usual demeanor.
"I am reading from the book of First Samuel," Roy said, as he opened the big pulpit Bible:
Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and many fell* on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchishua, the sons of Saul. The battle pressed hard upon Saul; the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by them. Then Saul said to his armour-bearer, "Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through, and make sport of me." But his armour-bearer was unwilling; for he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. When his armour-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. So Saul and his three sons and his armour-bearer and all his men died together on the same day. When the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their towns and fled; and the Philistines came and occupied them.
-- 1 Samuel 31:1-7
"You may wonder about my choice of text," Roy continued, looking straight ahead, his eyes at first engaging those of his fellow worshipers, and then looking beyond them as if transfixed by some far away scene.
"You have heard the phrase, 'He fell on his own sword.' It comes from this story of King Saul's suicide in the midst of a lost battle in which he was gravely wounded and witnessed the death of three of his sons. He takes his own life rather than face capture and humiliation.
"We read later in Second Samuel that David, who was to become king following Saul, is deeply aggrieved upon hearing the news of his death, and that of Saul's son Jonathan, his beloved friend. David offers up a lamentation, which he says should be taught to all the people: 'Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen!' "
"How the mighty have fallen," Roy repeated almost as sigh.
"We come today to remember how the mighty have fallen in our own time. We sing 'O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.' We honor those who have fought bravely and the many who have given their lives fighting for freedom. Flags fly over their graves and their names are inscribed on our most cherished monuments. But this is only part of the story..."
Roy became quiet for a moment, lowered his gaze, looked from one side of the church to the other, and then picked up a newspaper clipping and began to read:
When guns fall silent and ceasefires are agreed, wars live on in the minds of the men and women who fought them. And a killer still stalks them, more deadly than the enemies they once faced. Being in a conflict environment is killing US soldiers. But surprisingly, the biggest killers are not enemy combatants. For the second year in row, more US soldiers killed themselves than were killed in combat. In 2010, 468 soldiers took their own lives, compared to 462 killed in fighting. And even off the battlefield, suicide rates continue to soar... Last year, 20% of America's 30,000 suicides was a soldier or a veteran... A quarter of the homeless in America are military veterans. The unemployment rate among vets hovers above 12%." (RT News, http://www.rt.com/news/us-soldiers-suicide-combat-487/)
Roy opened his mouth and tried to speak but no words came out. After a few moments he walked down from the pulpit and sat in the first pew with his head bowed and his hand over his face.
The organist began to play "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The congregation stood up to sing, but with considerably less gusto than at the beginning of the service.
The next day an obituary appeared in the local paper with the name of Roy's son, Brian Gilbert Perkins, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, who had taken his own life two days before Roy had come to preach.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller in the Milwaukee area. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
Death and Joy
by Keith Hewitt
Mark 5:21-43
I love my daughter.
I want to be perfectly clear on that, so you won't judge me when I say that at least part of me wishes she weren't here.
Still with me? You haven't thrown up your hands in disgust and walked away? Or closed your ears and refused to take in anything else I say?
Good.
You see, it's this way: my little girl had been sick for the better part of a week, ill with a fever. What it was, I cannot say... there are so many things that can take a child from us and this was just one of the nameless killers that come by night and steal away our young. She went to bed feeling fine and woke with a raging fever. She could not eat, could barely drink, and spent the next couple of days just lying on her bed, shivering and sweating... sometimes still as death, sometimes thrashing as though she might fight off the illness with hands and feet. My wife watched over her, tried to keep her cool by soaking rags in cold water and wrapping them about her arms and legs, dabbing at her forehead with them, but to no avail.
She stopped drinking after three days. That's when I decided to find the Nazarene prophet and ask him to heal her. My wife's sister said it was just an excuse for me to leave my wife alone as she cared for our daughter on her deathbed but that's not so. I did it because I'd heard miraculous things whispered in the synagogue -- stories of a great healer, a man who could heal anybody of anything.
His theology -- what I could grasp second and third hand -- was unusual, but with a dying child in my home, it didn't really concern me. All I was thinking about were the stories. A miracle worker who could cast out demons and make a blind man see, I reasoned, should be able to bring a twelve-year-old girl back from the brink of death. So I sought him out, looked for the crowds, then cut through them with little regard for courtesy or kindness -- just squeezed between people when I could, shoved them out of the way when I couldn't. I didn't care -- all that mattered was slicing through the wall of humanity that kept me apart from my last hope on earth.
And then... and then, as I got to the inner core, the heart of the crowd, I called his name. I called his name and reached out to him, "Jesus!" I called his name, and I prayed for mercy. "Jesus! My daughter is dying! Please heal her of this curse, I beg you!" I called his name, and I wept -- tears that weighed upon my soul even as they rolled down my cheeks. "Jesus, I beg of you, heal my little girl! She is near death!"
And he looked at me.
Of all the dozens of people calling out to him, of all the hundreds of voices bubbling in the little grove at the outside of town, he heard my voice, and he looked straight at me. His face was weary, greasy from the heat and dirty from the road, but beneath those weary eyes there was a gentle smile that lifted me up like strong hands beneath my shoulders. "All right Jairus," he said quietly, "bring me to your daughter."
It was not until later that I took time to marvel that he knew my name. I was too busy leading Jesus -- and that crowd -- to my home. Along the way, we stopped when it appeared that another healing had occurred, but I did not want to take the time, and I tried to hurry him along. Yes, hurry him along, as though it was my place to tell a prophet what to do! I look back, now, and wonder how I had the audacity... but I did.
No man wants to see his child die. Nor waste time if it may mean her life.
A servant found me, then, and reported that my girl had passed on. I stood there, head spinning and heart sinking -- and Jesus just looked at me and said, "Don't worry, Jairus. Just believe." Then he and several of his men broke off from the group and followed me home. My steps were slower, now, because I knew what I would find.
My wife and her sister were outside, weeping. Knowing the answer to my question, already, I still asked -- and my wife's sister just stared at me and said, "It's over, Jairus. She's dead and there's nothing to be done about it." Her expression told me that there was more she wanted to say, but she refrained, with her sister already sobbing beside her.
Helplessly, I looked at Jesus, then at her, tried to explain that I thought I was doing the right thing. After a moment or two I felt his hand on my shoulder, turned to see those eyes, again, and that smile. Gently, he said, "She is only sleeping, my friend. Have faith."
When I just nodded dumbly, he took my wife and I by the hand and brought us inside, let us show him to the room where our daughter had died. She was tiny -- so tiny -- and her skin was like thin parchment stretched tight over a skeleton that was too large for the body. Her eyes were closed, her hands folded over her chest with her bony fingers interlaced; a downy feather still lay in the philtrum between her upper lip and nose, where the slightest breath might cause it to tremble.
But it lay terribly still.
If you have seen death once, you know it when your paths cross again... and I knew I saw it here. Standing there, heart breaking, I knew my little girl had battled the fever until she had nothing left with which to fight and had then traded her life for the eternal peace of death.
After a moment or two, the Nazarene broke ranks with his men, stepped forward until he was next to the bed, and leaned over it. He looked down at her, studying that still, wasted form for what seemed like a very long time... and then he leaned over and whispered something, whether to himself or to her, I do not know -- but he whispered, and then he smiled, and he reached down and took one hand, untangling it from the other, and held it grasped in his own.
"Little girl, arise," he said with quiet firmness, and there was electricity in the room. My skin crawled, and the little hairs on the back of my neck and my arm stood up, the way they do when lightning is about to strike nearby -- my heart was suddenly racing, for all its heaviness, and I found that my breath had caught, stopped as though someone was suddenly squeezing my chest and preventing me from breathing.
In the next moment, her eyes opened and she took a deep, gasping breath, sneezed hard as the feather tickled her nose. Another breath and she sat up, gently guided by his hand... then swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up uncertainly, her hand still in his until she was fully erect.
Joy! Unfettered, untempered joy! Her mother fell upon her even as she attempted to start walking around the room, and I wrapped both of them in my arms as I wept for joy. My little girl was back! The Nazarene had battled death and won! I looked up from my wife and daughter, caught his eye and murmured, "Thank you," knowing that it was totally inadequate.
He said nothing, just smiled... and when things had calmed down a bit, admonished us not to speak of this miracle to others. We promised, and he left with one last backward glance, one last smile at my daughter. He left, and we tried to return to a normal life.
Only there's nothing normal about it.
Here, weeks later, my little girl sits across from me at dinner, and as she tries to tell me about her day, all I can think of is that she was dead. I don't know what to make of her or of this miracle. She brushes her hair, and all I can remember is how she looked that day -- the pallor of her skin, the parchment-like look of it, the skeletal protrusions and the blue in her lips.
She talks to me, and all I can think of is that she has seen death. There is a gulf that separates the living and the dead, but somehow she had crossed it twice, going and coming back... and here she sits, knowing that which no other human can know. I tried to talk to her about it, when her mother wasn't around, but she couldn't talk... couldn't describe any of it.
Well, she couldn't describe anything accept joy. Wherever she was, whatever it was like, she could tell me that once the Nazarene claimed her for life, there was a great joy in her heart, beyond anything she had ever experienced.
It makes me uncomfortable, not knowing what she has seen, knowing only that she had been dead but was now alive. But maybe the joy she felt is all I need to know. I look at her, and I see death and mystery... but another part of me reminds me there is new life too. There is joyful new life reclaimed from death by the Nazarene.
And now I wonder: If he did that for her... can he do it for me?
One day, I hope to find out.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). Keith's newest book NaTiVity Dramas: The Third Season will be published September 2012. He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
*****************************************
StoryShare, July 1, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 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.
"How the Mighty Have Fallen" by John Sumwalt
"Death and Joy" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
How the Mighty Have Fallen
by John Sumwalt
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said: "Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen!"
-- 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-19
It was to be a brief sorrowful sermon that first Sunday in July before Independence Day. The altar guild had decorated the chancel with two large bouquets of red, white, and blue carnations. Attendance was light, typical of holiday weekend Sundays when many families were traveling or attending to backyard barbecues. The few faithful souls who always came sang "America the Beautiful" and "My Country Tis of Thee" with a gusto that belied their numbers.
The pastor was on vacation. Following the anthem a man who was unknown to the congregation rose up to preach. They had read in the bulletin that he was a lay person from a nearby town. No one recognized his name or knew anything about his family.
"My name is Roy Perkins," the unknown preacher said. "I went to grade school with your pastor. He has invited me to give the message on this Independence Day Sunday. I teach Sunday school in our little church over in New Haven. I am honored to be with you.
The preacher spoke slowly, in a soft voice barely audible to those in the back. And though his words were warm, his face looked grim and his tone was almost somber. If they had known Roy they would have known that this was not his usual demeanor.
"I am reading from the book of First Samuel," Roy said, as he opened the big pulpit Bible:
Now the Philistines fought against Israel; and the men of Israel fled before the Philistines, and many fell* on Mount Gilboa. The Philistines overtook Saul and his sons; and the Philistines killed Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchishua, the sons of Saul. The battle pressed hard upon Saul; the archers found him, and he was badly wounded by them. Then Saul said to his armour-bearer, "Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through, and make sport of me." But his armour-bearer was unwilling; for he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. When his armour-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. So Saul and his three sons and his armour-bearer and all his men died together on the same day. When the men of Israel who were on the other side of the valley and those beyond the Jordan saw that the men of Israel had fled and that Saul and his sons were dead, they forsook their towns and fled; and the Philistines came and occupied them.
-- 1 Samuel 31:1-7
"You may wonder about my choice of text," Roy continued, looking straight ahead, his eyes at first engaging those of his fellow worshipers, and then looking beyond them as if transfixed by some far away scene.
"You have heard the phrase, 'He fell on his own sword.' It comes from this story of King Saul's suicide in the midst of a lost battle in which he was gravely wounded and witnessed the death of three of his sons. He takes his own life rather than face capture and humiliation.
"We read later in Second Samuel that David, who was to become king following Saul, is deeply aggrieved upon hearing the news of his death, and that of Saul's son Jonathan, his beloved friend. David offers up a lamentation, which he says should be taught to all the people: 'Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen!' "
"How the mighty have fallen," Roy repeated almost as sigh.
"We come today to remember how the mighty have fallen in our own time. We sing 'O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life.' We honor those who have fought bravely and the many who have given their lives fighting for freedom. Flags fly over their graves and their names are inscribed on our most cherished monuments. But this is only part of the story..."
Roy became quiet for a moment, lowered his gaze, looked from one side of the church to the other, and then picked up a newspaper clipping and began to read:
When guns fall silent and ceasefires are agreed, wars live on in the minds of the men and women who fought them. And a killer still stalks them, more deadly than the enemies they once faced. Being in a conflict environment is killing US soldiers. But surprisingly, the biggest killers are not enemy combatants. For the second year in row, more US soldiers killed themselves than were killed in combat. In 2010, 468 soldiers took their own lives, compared to 462 killed in fighting. And even off the battlefield, suicide rates continue to soar... Last year, 20% of America's 30,000 suicides was a soldier or a veteran... A quarter of the homeless in America are military veterans. The unemployment rate among vets hovers above 12%." (RT News, http://www.rt.com/news/us-soldiers-suicide-combat-487/)
Roy opened his mouth and tried to speak but no words came out. After a few moments he walked down from the pulpit and sat in the first pew with his head bowed and his hand over his face.
The organist began to play "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The congregation stood up to sing, but with considerably less gusto than at the beginning of the service.
The next day an obituary appeared in the local paper with the name of Roy's son, Brian Gilbert Perkins, a veteran of the Afghanistan war, who had taken his own life two days before Roy had come to preach.
John Sumwalt is the pastor of Our Lord's United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin, and a noted storyteller in the Milwaukee area. He is the author of nine books, including the acclaimed Vision Stories series and How to Preach the Miracles: Why People Don't Believe Them and What You Can Do About It. John and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt served for three years as the co-editors of StoryShare. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), Sumwalt received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for parish ministry from UDTS in 1997.
Death and Joy
by Keith Hewitt
Mark 5:21-43
I love my daughter.
I want to be perfectly clear on that, so you won't judge me when I say that at least part of me wishes she weren't here.
Still with me? You haven't thrown up your hands in disgust and walked away? Or closed your ears and refused to take in anything else I say?
Good.
You see, it's this way: my little girl had been sick for the better part of a week, ill with a fever. What it was, I cannot say... there are so many things that can take a child from us and this was just one of the nameless killers that come by night and steal away our young. She went to bed feeling fine and woke with a raging fever. She could not eat, could barely drink, and spent the next couple of days just lying on her bed, shivering and sweating... sometimes still as death, sometimes thrashing as though she might fight off the illness with hands and feet. My wife watched over her, tried to keep her cool by soaking rags in cold water and wrapping them about her arms and legs, dabbing at her forehead with them, but to no avail.
She stopped drinking after three days. That's when I decided to find the Nazarene prophet and ask him to heal her. My wife's sister said it was just an excuse for me to leave my wife alone as she cared for our daughter on her deathbed but that's not so. I did it because I'd heard miraculous things whispered in the synagogue -- stories of a great healer, a man who could heal anybody of anything.
His theology -- what I could grasp second and third hand -- was unusual, but with a dying child in my home, it didn't really concern me. All I was thinking about were the stories. A miracle worker who could cast out demons and make a blind man see, I reasoned, should be able to bring a twelve-year-old girl back from the brink of death. So I sought him out, looked for the crowds, then cut through them with little regard for courtesy or kindness -- just squeezed between people when I could, shoved them out of the way when I couldn't. I didn't care -- all that mattered was slicing through the wall of humanity that kept me apart from my last hope on earth.
And then... and then, as I got to the inner core, the heart of the crowd, I called his name. I called his name and reached out to him, "Jesus!" I called his name, and I prayed for mercy. "Jesus! My daughter is dying! Please heal her of this curse, I beg you!" I called his name, and I wept -- tears that weighed upon my soul even as they rolled down my cheeks. "Jesus, I beg of you, heal my little girl! She is near death!"
And he looked at me.
Of all the dozens of people calling out to him, of all the hundreds of voices bubbling in the little grove at the outside of town, he heard my voice, and he looked straight at me. His face was weary, greasy from the heat and dirty from the road, but beneath those weary eyes there was a gentle smile that lifted me up like strong hands beneath my shoulders. "All right Jairus," he said quietly, "bring me to your daughter."
It was not until later that I took time to marvel that he knew my name. I was too busy leading Jesus -- and that crowd -- to my home. Along the way, we stopped when it appeared that another healing had occurred, but I did not want to take the time, and I tried to hurry him along. Yes, hurry him along, as though it was my place to tell a prophet what to do! I look back, now, and wonder how I had the audacity... but I did.
No man wants to see his child die. Nor waste time if it may mean her life.
A servant found me, then, and reported that my girl had passed on. I stood there, head spinning and heart sinking -- and Jesus just looked at me and said, "Don't worry, Jairus. Just believe." Then he and several of his men broke off from the group and followed me home. My steps were slower, now, because I knew what I would find.
My wife and her sister were outside, weeping. Knowing the answer to my question, already, I still asked -- and my wife's sister just stared at me and said, "It's over, Jairus. She's dead and there's nothing to be done about it." Her expression told me that there was more she wanted to say, but she refrained, with her sister already sobbing beside her.
Helplessly, I looked at Jesus, then at her, tried to explain that I thought I was doing the right thing. After a moment or two I felt his hand on my shoulder, turned to see those eyes, again, and that smile. Gently, he said, "She is only sleeping, my friend. Have faith."
When I just nodded dumbly, he took my wife and I by the hand and brought us inside, let us show him to the room where our daughter had died. She was tiny -- so tiny -- and her skin was like thin parchment stretched tight over a skeleton that was too large for the body. Her eyes were closed, her hands folded over her chest with her bony fingers interlaced; a downy feather still lay in the philtrum between her upper lip and nose, where the slightest breath might cause it to tremble.
But it lay terribly still.
If you have seen death once, you know it when your paths cross again... and I knew I saw it here. Standing there, heart breaking, I knew my little girl had battled the fever until she had nothing left with which to fight and had then traded her life for the eternal peace of death.
After a moment or two, the Nazarene broke ranks with his men, stepped forward until he was next to the bed, and leaned over it. He looked down at her, studying that still, wasted form for what seemed like a very long time... and then he leaned over and whispered something, whether to himself or to her, I do not know -- but he whispered, and then he smiled, and he reached down and took one hand, untangling it from the other, and held it grasped in his own.
"Little girl, arise," he said with quiet firmness, and there was electricity in the room. My skin crawled, and the little hairs on the back of my neck and my arm stood up, the way they do when lightning is about to strike nearby -- my heart was suddenly racing, for all its heaviness, and I found that my breath had caught, stopped as though someone was suddenly squeezing my chest and preventing me from breathing.
In the next moment, her eyes opened and she took a deep, gasping breath, sneezed hard as the feather tickled her nose. Another breath and she sat up, gently guided by his hand... then swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up uncertainly, her hand still in his until she was fully erect.
Joy! Unfettered, untempered joy! Her mother fell upon her even as she attempted to start walking around the room, and I wrapped both of them in my arms as I wept for joy. My little girl was back! The Nazarene had battled death and won! I looked up from my wife and daughter, caught his eye and murmured, "Thank you," knowing that it was totally inadequate.
He said nothing, just smiled... and when things had calmed down a bit, admonished us not to speak of this miracle to others. We promised, and he left with one last backward glance, one last smile at my daughter. He left, and we tried to return to a normal life.
Only there's nothing normal about it.
Here, weeks later, my little girl sits across from me at dinner, and as she tries to tell me about her day, all I can think of is that she was dead. I don't know what to make of her or of this miracle. She brushes her hair, and all I can remember is how she looked that day -- the pallor of her skin, the parchment-like look of it, the skeletal protrusions and the blue in her lips.
She talks to me, and all I can think of is that she has seen death. There is a gulf that separates the living and the dead, but somehow she had crossed it twice, going and coming back... and here she sits, knowing that which no other human can know. I tried to talk to her about it, when her mother wasn't around, but she couldn't talk... couldn't describe any of it.
Well, she couldn't describe anything accept joy. Wherever she was, whatever it was like, she could tell me that once the Nazarene claimed her for life, there was a great joy in her heart, beyond anything she had ever experienced.
It makes me uncomfortable, not knowing what she has seen, knowing only that she had been dead but was now alive. But maybe the joy she felt is all I need to know. I look at her, and I see death and mystery... but another part of me reminds me there is new life too. There is joyful new life reclaimed from death by the Nazarene.
And now I wonder: If he did that for her... can he do it for me?
One day, I hope to find out.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). Keith's newest book NaTiVity Dramas: The Third Season will be published September 2012. He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
*****************************************
StoryShare, July 1, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2012 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.
