Longing For The Smallest Hint Of God’s Presence
Stories
Contents
“Longing For The Smallest Hint of God” by David O. Bales
“The Book Of The Acts Of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)” by David O. Bales
“Equipped and Ready” by Peter Andrew Smith
Longing For The Smallest Hint of God’s Presence
by David O. Bales
Psalm 84
A thundering concussion shook the earth fifty yards away. The Germans lobbed their shells nearly by clockwork, punctual even in death, the chaplain thought, their attempt to keep the British tense. Lately the British became creative, delivering a staccato of artillery shells screaming in response to their enemy. Upon either schedule howls of death flew east-to-west and back, tormenting no-man’s-land—the great war’s monotony of danger at every step. The chaplain mucked along in the trench, loaded like a mule, his pack filled with gifts for the soldiers: The New Testament With Psalms and Woodbine cigarettes. Each step broke the skim of ice. He approached the frontline, perceived not because he held a map of the trenches, but because of the smell of excrement half frozen ankle deep with glue-like mud and of decomposing bodies, soldiers dead a year before and now revealed when the trenches were extended. The bodies remained to be exhumed later or to be recorded in the number of unknown not buried but covered by Belgium’s random soil.
Another burst to the rear was far enough away not to harm him, but he ducked involuntarily, and the rush of the blast pushed him along the communication trench. He met a junction with scraps of lumber hacked into arrowed signs as though marking the English countryside. He sloshed to the left. Friendly artillery now threw over two in a row, trying their unpredictable rhythm to keep down the German lookouts and disrupt their snipers. A bullet whined overhead. Nothing he could imagine it was aiming at. Maybe a German firing his day’s assigned number of rounds.
At the last corner to the frontline trench, the chaplain’s left foot slipped off the duckboard and he sank unexpectedly. His shoulder smashed into the shoring timbers. When he stopped to pull himself up and to rub the pain from his shoulder, he glimpsed a soldier dash up to the trench’s fire-step and try to leap over it. The sergeant already on the step wrestled with the man, “Stop! Stop!” Frozen puffs of breath surrounded their struggle. The sergeant struck him as the other grabbed for his periscope. “You can’t see it!”
The chaplain splashed to them as quickly as he could. The large man tugged at the smaller one who clawed over the sandbags. A German round ended the wrestling match. The smaller man crumbled onto his back into the trench, his helmet holed by the bullet rolling off to the side.
The large sergeant stood stunned, as though himself struck by a bullet. “I tried to stop him,” he said, stepping down beside the soldier now twitching in a quagmire of death throes.
“He went trench-mad,” the sergeant said, talking to nobody. “Been coming on for days.” He turned to the chaplain and coughed to stifle a sob, “I told him I thought I saw a sparrow through my periscope, right in front of us. He charged me, screaming, ‘A sparrow, a sparrow!’ He had to see it. But, but it landed beyond the berm. I told him twice, ‘Hey, it’s down already, landed already,’” he said, swishing his hand back and forth towards no-man’s-land, “and we couldn’t stick up a head to look. This week my new periscope’s been nicked twice by a sniper.”
The big man shook himself back to his duty, looking each way in the trench to see others arriving to identify the casualty. “Get back! Don’t bunch up!” he yelled. “Time for another Boche shell.” The men obeyed reluctantly, trudging away in the trench’s six inches of slop. A couple of them looked back, faces as young as the sniper’s victim.
The sergeant stood slack faced as the chaplain knelt in the mud next to the soldier. The man’s eyes were open but not focused. The chaplain’s large pack pulled him awkwardly to the side. He spoke over his shoulder, “What’s his name?”
“Jack,” the sergeant said, “Jack Belson.” He turned his face away. “My neighbor. All my life. Like a little brother.” He spoke with his shoulders slumped and his arms dangling limp to his sides. “It was the psalm, that bloody psalm. Rattled it off all the time. Whenever we were relieved to the rear, he’d spot the tents and spout, ‘I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.’ We learned it in chapel. That’s the one with the swallow.”
“I know,” the chaplain said and leaned closer to the dying soldier. He was breathing in shorter gasps.
The sergeant rushed to speak to the chaplain’s back, “He was going to be a pastor, like you.”
The chaplain placed a trembling hand on the soldier’s chest and bent to his ear, “Jack, our Lord Jesus will take you to the sparrows. You’ll be in the place you’ve longed for. No more doors or even tents. You’ll be with the Lord. Along with the songs of all the saints you’ll hear the heavenly sparrows chatter and the swallows warble in the Lord’s courts forever.”
Jack Belson stopped breathing as a German shell flashed, the blast punching the sergeant and the chaplain as they dived into the mud. A shell fragment ripped through the chaplain’s pack, plastering cigarette and Bible paper into the trench wall.
Preaching point: Longing for the Lord in any (even the worst possible) circumstance.
* * *
The Book Of The Acts Of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
by David O. Bales
1 Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11) 22-30, 41-43
“So, after a week we’ve collated the scraps they handed us,” Elihoreph said. He stood still as he looked down to his two fellow scribes sitting at the writing table. “I’ve told the priests we’ve, ah, we’ve squeezed together information from most of the interviews and recorded what the priests insisted be included.” He paused again and forced his aged body erect, as if to disclose a destination he’d rather not travel toward. “I’ve labored at this long enough I’m no longer concerned who we might merely offend if we record our knowledge of Solomon.” He bent at the waist toward his two comrades. He whispered, “What will happen to us if we tell all the truth?”
Ahijah looked up to Elihoreph and responded warily, “Me too. Every morning I come to the palace to face this growing document as we pad it with royal propaganda, and I’m not sure if we should even speak to one another about what we know.” He turned sideways at Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat threw his hands up, “What’re you two getting at?” He peered at Elihoreph and Ahijah as they glanced guardedly to one another.
Elihoreph began to pace to better collect his thoughts, but the cedar paneled room was barely large enough for the table and three stools. He turned back and bowed his head, “Well, I’ve worked myself up to talk about this. Ahijah, all right with you to discuss it?”
Ahijah said, “Yes. My fear has been fighting a losing duel with my conscience.”
Without comprehension, Jehoshaphat focused back and forth on Elihoreph and then on Ahijah.
“You’re young,” Elihoreph said to him. “You were born here in Jerusalem, and you’ve dwelled here all your life. We’ve lived through most of Solomon’s administration and traveled the whole kingdom. What will the priests and the new king do if we tell, if we write, what we know?”
“I’m sorry to inform you,” Ahijah turned quietly to Jehoshaphat, “now that we’re already writing. This job we’ve been assigned might be more dangerous than you expected.”
Jehoshaphat laid down his stylus and tapped it with a finger, eyes wide with incomprehension and fear.
Elihoreph stepped to the table and pointed down to the manuscript. “Here. We’ve arrived at Solomon’s prayer of dedication in Jerusalem’s temple. This is what’s done it, what’s finally kicked me over the edge. Solomon brought the ark into the temple. Ahijah and I were there from his planning the production to the completion of the performance. Do we dare record in the chronicle what else we know about Solomon?”
“We’ve traveled to the northern reaches of the kingdom,” Ahijah said, “and met with their officials. We know about the brewing revolts that Solomon dealt with—of his own making. These northerners are Yahweh’s people and the larger majority of the population, yet Solomon ruled the north like a tyrant, taxing them every year an entire month of goods and services for the consumption of Judah, Jerusalem, and his myriad of court officials living in royal luxury. He enslaved any foreigner who happened through our land to benefit Judah and Jerusalem. All for his magnificent building projects and supporting—in the most opulent manner—his many foreign princesses and their multiple gods.”
Silence was now uncomfortable in the cramped room. Through the window they heard courtiers arriving. “So,” Elihoreph said as he sat down and laid a hand on the manuscript, “Do we merely scratch party line words on the parchment? Do we make Solomon sound like the most faithful of all Yahweh’s servants? You see here in the notes that in his prayer he called himself a servant.”
Jehoshaphat spoke slowly, “Are you saying that building the temple and installing the ark was phony?”
“No, no, no,” Elihoreph said. “Just that Solomon wasn’t as rosy as the cosmetics of royal publicity made him look. In my mind, Solomon detracted from Yahweh’s majesty by the difference between what he asserted and how he lived and ruled. Believe me, I didn’t say so at the time. It’s pretty risky even now if a word I speak leaves this room.” He peered at Jehoshaphat who waved his hands before him. “Not from me. No, I swear before Yahweh.”
“Good,” Elihoreph said, “Then consider that Solomon waited eleven months after completing the building to bring the ark and to dedicate the building. Why wait? To spread the news and build anticipation for the production—and send the invitations that dare not be ignored. The temple is Yahweh’s earthly meeting point with us. The ark is real and powerful in our midst. God shows up here for all the world. But Solomon? His heart was yanked dozens of ways by a parade of other gods. I don’t doubt he was struck by what happened to him in the temple that day; but, if we’re supposed to compose the official annals, we need to highlight Yahweh, not the spoiled, self-seeking Solomon.”
“I’m with you, Elihoreph,” Ahijah said. “I could sit here and jot down historical information, exaggerated or not, until we got to the temple. The temple is about Yahweh. Solomon and his crew arranged the dedication to make Solomon shine, right down to his promise to foreigners, when all the time he enslaved each foreigner that showed up. We need to conclude a pact that what we ink into this chronicle tells the truth about Yahweh. The future will show what comes to this nation now Solomon’s dead. Our northern brothers and sisters are sizzling with bitterness. His excesses and his despotism against them will catch up with us. We three must produce an annal with integrity—not for Judah or Solomon, but for Yahweh.”
Elihoreph held his hand before him to the others. Ahijah stood quickly and placed his hand on Elihoreph’s. Jehoshaphat cautiously rose, a questioning look on his face. Then he reached out his hand to the others.
“A pact,” Elihoreph said. “We’ll write the grandeur of Yahweh and his faithfulness to those who pray toward his temple. We’ll emphasize, by the climax of the episode, that foreigners will be drawn here to worship Yahweh and not to be enslaved by the tyranny of a king.”
“A pact,” said Ahijah.
“A,” Jehoshaphat paused, “pact.”
Preaching point: It’s about Yahweh, not a religious hero.
(“Elihoreph and Ahijah sons of Shisha were secretaries; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was recorder,” 1 Kings 4:3. Solomon’s consumption of taxed resources, 1 Kings 4:22. Solomon’s wives and consorts and his worshipping other gods, 1 Kings 11:1-8. Solomon’s enslaving all non-Israelites, 1 Kings 9:20-21.)
* * *
Equipped and Ready
by Peter Andrew Smith
Ephesians 6:10-20
George put the pot on the drying rack next to the sink. “Well, I have to admit that when you invited me to work in the kitchen that this was not what I expected.”
“Really?” Kim answered as she put the cups back in the cupboard. “What did you expect was going to happen when you came to help out at the church’s weekly free lunch program?”
George shrugged. “I guess I thought that people would come in and have lunch.”
“I thought that’s exactly what happened today.” Kim gestured around the kitchen. “We served about a hundred meals to people who would otherwise be hungry.”
“That’s true -- but there was more going on here than just empty bellies being filled.” George wiped up the excess water near the sink. “There was a whole spirit to the meal that I didn’t expect.”
Kim tilted her head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“First of all, there was the general buzz in this place. I have honestly been to family reunions that were quieter and more subdued. Everyone was talking and carrying on.”
“The meals can get quite noisy.” Kim nodded. “What else did you notice?”
“Second, there were the reactions of everyone. People were smiling and carrying on like this was a family dinner.”
“For many people this was the only family dinner they will have this week.”
“I can believe it. The third thing that struck me was how many different people came to the meal. I expected some of the people I see around the church but there were so many different people.”
“The meals have grown popular. Next week you should get out of the kitchen and talk to some of these people.” Kim smiled. “Did you notice Frank, the large man sitting near the door who really didn’t say anything?”
“I noticed him sitting there just nursing his coffee after he had eaten. I didn’t see him talking to anyone but you. What’s his story?”
“Frank is a veteran who has struggled since leaving the army. He sits near the door because any other place makes him uncomfortable. He has problems with crowds and noise.”
“Really?” George looked out at the hall which had been filled to capacity with people during the meal. “How can he stand it when things get as crazy as they did today?”
“Some weeks he can’t. Other weeks like today he just sits there watching,” Kim said. “I asked him once why he comes, and he said that this is the closest thing to a safe space he has ever found.”
“Huh.” George looked thoughtful. “What about the young woman with the baby who came late? What’s her story?”
“Pauline? She’s trying to finish her GED and get some temp jobs through the agency that works out of the church on Mondays,” Kim said. “She’s just finished one year being sober and is really doing well. We all prayed for her the last time she went off the wagon. It was touch and go for awhile, but she seems to be doing well.”
“Wow.” George sat on a stool. “That’s what I mean. I thought all we did in this outreach program is fight hunger. I never realized so much more was going on here.”
“Yeah. You realize very quickly that our battles here aren’t just with hunger but with evils that strip people of their lives and dignity.” Kim sat down across from him. “That’s why we take the time to talk to people and Pastor Luke has folks come in from support programs and other agencies to offer help. We are really fighting a battle for their lives.”
“Just like Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians?”
“Exactly like that.” Kim nodded. “We equip ourselves with the best tools and the most faithful ways we can, and we go into the world to make a difference for the better.”
George picked up a ladle sitting on the counter. “I never imagined this could be the sword of the spirit.”
“Why did you think the sword of the spirit would look like?”
George paused for a moment. “I guess really more like a sword that something to spoon out soup.”
“Can you imagine a better way to combat despair than dishing our food? Or a more powerful way to show the grace of God than by freely giving people what they need the most? Or a more appropriate way for us to reach into the community and touch the lives of people like Frank and Pauline with the gospel?”
George looked at her and around the kitchen. “You know when you put it that way, I can’t imagine a more important effort.”
“Which is why I begin and end each time we serve a meal in this kitchen with prayer. Would you like to pray with me?
George smiled. “I would be honored.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, August 22, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
“Longing For The Smallest Hint of God” by David O. Bales
“The Book Of The Acts Of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)” by David O. Bales
“Equipped and Ready” by Peter Andrew Smith
Longing For The Smallest Hint of God’s Presence
by David O. Bales
Psalm 84
A thundering concussion shook the earth fifty yards away. The Germans lobbed their shells nearly by clockwork, punctual even in death, the chaplain thought, their attempt to keep the British tense. Lately the British became creative, delivering a staccato of artillery shells screaming in response to their enemy. Upon either schedule howls of death flew east-to-west and back, tormenting no-man’s-land—the great war’s monotony of danger at every step. The chaplain mucked along in the trench, loaded like a mule, his pack filled with gifts for the soldiers: The New Testament With Psalms and Woodbine cigarettes. Each step broke the skim of ice. He approached the frontline, perceived not because he held a map of the trenches, but because of the smell of excrement half frozen ankle deep with glue-like mud and of decomposing bodies, soldiers dead a year before and now revealed when the trenches were extended. The bodies remained to be exhumed later or to be recorded in the number of unknown not buried but covered by Belgium’s random soil.
Another burst to the rear was far enough away not to harm him, but he ducked involuntarily, and the rush of the blast pushed him along the communication trench. He met a junction with scraps of lumber hacked into arrowed signs as though marking the English countryside. He sloshed to the left. Friendly artillery now threw over two in a row, trying their unpredictable rhythm to keep down the German lookouts and disrupt their snipers. A bullet whined overhead. Nothing he could imagine it was aiming at. Maybe a German firing his day’s assigned number of rounds.
At the last corner to the frontline trench, the chaplain’s left foot slipped off the duckboard and he sank unexpectedly. His shoulder smashed into the shoring timbers. When he stopped to pull himself up and to rub the pain from his shoulder, he glimpsed a soldier dash up to the trench’s fire-step and try to leap over it. The sergeant already on the step wrestled with the man, “Stop! Stop!” Frozen puffs of breath surrounded their struggle. The sergeant struck him as the other grabbed for his periscope. “You can’t see it!”
The chaplain splashed to them as quickly as he could. The large man tugged at the smaller one who clawed over the sandbags. A German round ended the wrestling match. The smaller man crumbled onto his back into the trench, his helmet holed by the bullet rolling off to the side.
The large sergeant stood stunned, as though himself struck by a bullet. “I tried to stop him,” he said, stepping down beside the soldier now twitching in a quagmire of death throes.
“He went trench-mad,” the sergeant said, talking to nobody. “Been coming on for days.” He turned to the chaplain and coughed to stifle a sob, “I told him I thought I saw a sparrow through my periscope, right in front of us. He charged me, screaming, ‘A sparrow, a sparrow!’ He had to see it. But, but it landed beyond the berm. I told him twice, ‘Hey, it’s down already, landed already,’” he said, swishing his hand back and forth towards no-man’s-land, “and we couldn’t stick up a head to look. This week my new periscope’s been nicked twice by a sniper.”
The big man shook himself back to his duty, looking each way in the trench to see others arriving to identify the casualty. “Get back! Don’t bunch up!” he yelled. “Time for another Boche shell.” The men obeyed reluctantly, trudging away in the trench’s six inches of slop. A couple of them looked back, faces as young as the sniper’s victim.
The sergeant stood slack faced as the chaplain knelt in the mud next to the soldier. The man’s eyes were open but not focused. The chaplain’s large pack pulled him awkwardly to the side. He spoke over his shoulder, “What’s his name?”
“Jack,” the sergeant said, “Jack Belson.” He turned his face away. “My neighbor. All my life. Like a little brother.” He spoke with his shoulders slumped and his arms dangling limp to his sides. “It was the psalm, that bloody psalm. Rattled it off all the time. Whenever we were relieved to the rear, he’d spot the tents and spout, ‘I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.’ We learned it in chapel. That’s the one with the swallow.”
“I know,” the chaplain said and leaned closer to the dying soldier. He was breathing in shorter gasps.
The sergeant rushed to speak to the chaplain’s back, “He was going to be a pastor, like you.”
The chaplain placed a trembling hand on the soldier’s chest and bent to his ear, “Jack, our Lord Jesus will take you to the sparrows. You’ll be in the place you’ve longed for. No more doors or even tents. You’ll be with the Lord. Along with the songs of all the saints you’ll hear the heavenly sparrows chatter and the swallows warble in the Lord’s courts forever.”
Jack Belson stopped breathing as a German shell flashed, the blast punching the sergeant and the chaplain as they dived into the mud. A shell fragment ripped through the chaplain’s pack, plastering cigarette and Bible paper into the trench wall.
Preaching point: Longing for the Lord in any (even the worst possible) circumstance.
* * *
The Book Of The Acts Of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41)
by David O. Bales
1 Kings 8:(1, 6, 10-11) 22-30, 41-43
“So, after a week we’ve collated the scraps they handed us,” Elihoreph said. He stood still as he looked down to his two fellow scribes sitting at the writing table. “I’ve told the priests we’ve, ah, we’ve squeezed together information from most of the interviews and recorded what the priests insisted be included.” He paused again and forced his aged body erect, as if to disclose a destination he’d rather not travel toward. “I’ve labored at this long enough I’m no longer concerned who we might merely offend if we record our knowledge of Solomon.” He bent at the waist toward his two comrades. He whispered, “What will happen to us if we tell all the truth?”
Ahijah looked up to Elihoreph and responded warily, “Me too. Every morning I come to the palace to face this growing document as we pad it with royal propaganda, and I’m not sure if we should even speak to one another about what we know.” He turned sideways at Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat threw his hands up, “What’re you two getting at?” He peered at Elihoreph and Ahijah as they glanced guardedly to one another.
Elihoreph began to pace to better collect his thoughts, but the cedar paneled room was barely large enough for the table and three stools. He turned back and bowed his head, “Well, I’ve worked myself up to talk about this. Ahijah, all right with you to discuss it?”
Ahijah said, “Yes. My fear has been fighting a losing duel with my conscience.”
Without comprehension, Jehoshaphat focused back and forth on Elihoreph and then on Ahijah.
“You’re young,” Elihoreph said to him. “You were born here in Jerusalem, and you’ve dwelled here all your life. We’ve lived through most of Solomon’s administration and traveled the whole kingdom. What will the priests and the new king do if we tell, if we write, what we know?”
“I’m sorry to inform you,” Ahijah turned quietly to Jehoshaphat, “now that we’re already writing. This job we’ve been assigned might be more dangerous than you expected.”
Jehoshaphat laid down his stylus and tapped it with a finger, eyes wide with incomprehension and fear.
Elihoreph stepped to the table and pointed down to the manuscript. “Here. We’ve arrived at Solomon’s prayer of dedication in Jerusalem’s temple. This is what’s done it, what’s finally kicked me over the edge. Solomon brought the ark into the temple. Ahijah and I were there from his planning the production to the completion of the performance. Do we dare record in the chronicle what else we know about Solomon?”
“We’ve traveled to the northern reaches of the kingdom,” Ahijah said, “and met with their officials. We know about the brewing revolts that Solomon dealt with—of his own making. These northerners are Yahweh’s people and the larger majority of the population, yet Solomon ruled the north like a tyrant, taxing them every year an entire month of goods and services for the consumption of Judah, Jerusalem, and his myriad of court officials living in royal luxury. He enslaved any foreigner who happened through our land to benefit Judah and Jerusalem. All for his magnificent building projects and supporting—in the most opulent manner—his many foreign princesses and their multiple gods.”
Silence was now uncomfortable in the cramped room. Through the window they heard courtiers arriving. “So,” Elihoreph said as he sat down and laid a hand on the manuscript, “Do we merely scratch party line words on the parchment? Do we make Solomon sound like the most faithful of all Yahweh’s servants? You see here in the notes that in his prayer he called himself a servant.”
Jehoshaphat spoke slowly, “Are you saying that building the temple and installing the ark was phony?”
“No, no, no,” Elihoreph said. “Just that Solomon wasn’t as rosy as the cosmetics of royal publicity made him look. In my mind, Solomon detracted from Yahweh’s majesty by the difference between what he asserted and how he lived and ruled. Believe me, I didn’t say so at the time. It’s pretty risky even now if a word I speak leaves this room.” He peered at Jehoshaphat who waved his hands before him. “Not from me. No, I swear before Yahweh.”
“Good,” Elihoreph said, “Then consider that Solomon waited eleven months after completing the building to bring the ark and to dedicate the building. Why wait? To spread the news and build anticipation for the production—and send the invitations that dare not be ignored. The temple is Yahweh’s earthly meeting point with us. The ark is real and powerful in our midst. God shows up here for all the world. But Solomon? His heart was yanked dozens of ways by a parade of other gods. I don’t doubt he was struck by what happened to him in the temple that day; but, if we’re supposed to compose the official annals, we need to highlight Yahweh, not the spoiled, self-seeking Solomon.”
“I’m with you, Elihoreph,” Ahijah said. “I could sit here and jot down historical information, exaggerated or not, until we got to the temple. The temple is about Yahweh. Solomon and his crew arranged the dedication to make Solomon shine, right down to his promise to foreigners, when all the time he enslaved each foreigner that showed up. We need to conclude a pact that what we ink into this chronicle tells the truth about Yahweh. The future will show what comes to this nation now Solomon’s dead. Our northern brothers and sisters are sizzling with bitterness. His excesses and his despotism against them will catch up with us. We three must produce an annal with integrity—not for Judah or Solomon, but for Yahweh.”
Elihoreph held his hand before him to the others. Ahijah stood quickly and placed his hand on Elihoreph’s. Jehoshaphat cautiously rose, a questioning look on his face. Then he reached out his hand to the others.
“A pact,” Elihoreph said. “We’ll write the grandeur of Yahweh and his faithfulness to those who pray toward his temple. We’ll emphasize, by the climax of the episode, that foreigners will be drawn here to worship Yahweh and not to be enslaved by the tyranny of a king.”
“A pact,” said Ahijah.
“A,” Jehoshaphat paused, “pact.”
Preaching point: It’s about Yahweh, not a religious hero.
(“Elihoreph and Ahijah sons of Shisha were secretaries; Jehoshaphat son of Ahilud was recorder,” 1 Kings 4:3. Solomon’s consumption of taxed resources, 1 Kings 4:22. Solomon’s wives and consorts and his worshipping other gods, 1 Kings 11:1-8. Solomon’s enslaving all non-Israelites, 1 Kings 9:20-21.)
* * *
Equipped and Ready
by Peter Andrew Smith
Ephesians 6:10-20
George put the pot on the drying rack next to the sink. “Well, I have to admit that when you invited me to work in the kitchen that this was not what I expected.”
“Really?” Kim answered as she put the cups back in the cupboard. “What did you expect was going to happen when you came to help out at the church’s weekly free lunch program?”
George shrugged. “I guess I thought that people would come in and have lunch.”
“I thought that’s exactly what happened today.” Kim gestured around the kitchen. “We served about a hundred meals to people who would otherwise be hungry.”
“That’s true -- but there was more going on here than just empty bellies being filled.” George wiped up the excess water near the sink. “There was a whole spirit to the meal that I didn’t expect.”
Kim tilted her head to one side. “What do you mean?”
“First of all, there was the general buzz in this place. I have honestly been to family reunions that were quieter and more subdued. Everyone was talking and carrying on.”
“The meals can get quite noisy.” Kim nodded. “What else did you notice?”
“Second, there were the reactions of everyone. People were smiling and carrying on like this was a family dinner.”
“For many people this was the only family dinner they will have this week.”
“I can believe it. The third thing that struck me was how many different people came to the meal. I expected some of the people I see around the church but there were so many different people.”
“The meals have grown popular. Next week you should get out of the kitchen and talk to some of these people.” Kim smiled. “Did you notice Frank, the large man sitting near the door who really didn’t say anything?”
“I noticed him sitting there just nursing his coffee after he had eaten. I didn’t see him talking to anyone but you. What’s his story?”
“Frank is a veteran who has struggled since leaving the army. He sits near the door because any other place makes him uncomfortable. He has problems with crowds and noise.”
“Really?” George looked out at the hall which had been filled to capacity with people during the meal. “How can he stand it when things get as crazy as they did today?”
“Some weeks he can’t. Other weeks like today he just sits there watching,” Kim said. “I asked him once why he comes, and he said that this is the closest thing to a safe space he has ever found.”
“Huh.” George looked thoughtful. “What about the young woman with the baby who came late? What’s her story?”
“Pauline? She’s trying to finish her GED and get some temp jobs through the agency that works out of the church on Mondays,” Kim said. “She’s just finished one year being sober and is really doing well. We all prayed for her the last time she went off the wagon. It was touch and go for awhile, but she seems to be doing well.”
“Wow.” George sat on a stool. “That’s what I mean. I thought all we did in this outreach program is fight hunger. I never realized so much more was going on here.”
“Yeah. You realize very quickly that our battles here aren’t just with hunger but with evils that strip people of their lives and dignity.” Kim sat down across from him. “That’s why we take the time to talk to people and Pastor Luke has folks come in from support programs and other agencies to offer help. We are really fighting a battle for their lives.”
“Just like Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians?”
“Exactly like that.” Kim nodded. “We equip ourselves with the best tools and the most faithful ways we can, and we go into the world to make a difference for the better.”
George picked up a ladle sitting on the counter. “I never imagined this could be the sword of the spirit.”
“Why did you think the sword of the spirit would look like?”
George paused for a moment. “I guess really more like a sword that something to spoon out soup.”
“Can you imagine a better way to combat despair than dishing our food? Or a more powerful way to show the grace of God than by freely giving people what they need the most? Or a more appropriate way for us to reach into the community and touch the lives of people like Frank and Pauline with the gospel?”
George looked at her and around the kitchen. “You know when you put it that way, I can’t imagine a more important effort.”
“Which is why I begin and end each time we serve a meal in this kitchen with prayer. Would you like to pray with me?
George smiled. “I would be honored.”
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StoryShare, August 22, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
