Make It A Rule
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Make It a Rule" by Frank Ramirez
"Who Is This Character?" by Sandra Herrmann
"Prophecy of Good Fortune" by Sandra Herrmann
* * * * * * *
Make It a Rule
by Frank Ramirez
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.
-- 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22
George Washington, remembered as a towering figure in our time, was just as respected in his own. The Founding Fathers, composed of brilliant minds from the thirteen colonies who were giants in their own way, could not imagine the diverse regions from which they came uniting behind anyone but General George Washington during the Revolutionary War, and later behind anyone but President George Washington after the constitution was ratified.
Nevertheless, he was acutely aware from an early age of his shortcomings. Although he was part of the highly respected and privileged planter class in the colony of Virginia, he knew he was relatively uneducated and believed he was lacking in the social graces that a person of his standing ought to display. That belief was reinforced by his experiences when he came into contact with British military officers whose attitude only reminded him that in their eyes he did not measure up.
Washington struggled with his own high spirits and a lack of discipline typical for his contemporaries. Young Virginia gentlemen acted impetuously without any concern for consequences or what others might think. Washington therefore came to believe that in order to improve himself it was up to him to adopt a disciplined approach to change. If he intended to make something of himself, he needed to turn to outside resources, self-help manuals if you will, and study them constantly.
According to historian Henry Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, Washington's rules came primarily from three different sources that were familiar to other young Virginians of his era. These were Seneca's Morals, a manual with French origins known as The Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, and the tragedy Cato, written by Joseph Addison.
From the Latin writer Seneca, Washington learned that it was important to avoid anger at all costs, because it could lead the unwary to disaster. Seneca encouraged a reasoned, philosophical approach to life. Sayings that meant a lot to Washington included:
An honest man can never be outdone in courtesy.
A good man can never be miserable, nor a wicked man happy.
A sensual life is a miserable life.
Hope and fear are the bane of human life.
The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us.
The Joseph Addison play, extremely popular in Washington's day, was based on the life of Cato the Younger, who lived during the time of the rise of imperial power that culminated in the accession of Julius Caesar to the post of emperor. Cato died rather than give up his freedoms, and from this play Washington was impressed with the need to put one's liberty first.
Finally, Washington keenly felt the need to learn the proper manners in order to conduct himself in society. From The Rules of Civility Washington learned that one was not to clean one's teeth at dinner with the table cloth, nor talk with one's mouth full of meat. Washington also learned: "Rinse not your Mouth in the Presence of others, Kill no vermin as Fleas, lice, ticks in the Sight of Others, and Spit not in the fire."
Washington especially gleaned how important it was to show respect for others and to take the feelings of others into account. One was not to speak about people who were absent, nor to show outward feelings of gladness about the misfortune of others. This approach to self-discipline made it possible for him to meet both victory and disaster with calmness and poise, to remain stoic in the face of sharp criticism from his peers, and to listen and learn from others while remaining at liberty to follow his own chosen course if that seemed better to him.
This discipline made him who he was in reality and in the eyes of his contemporaries who admired him.
The apostle Paul invites his fellow Christians in Thessalonika to also consider a list of rules as an approach to self-discipline in the face of sensual temptations in a pagan world. Giving thanks, rejoicing, encouraging the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community, attention to the scripture, testing the truth of God's word, holding fast to the good and abstaining from evil, these are the beginning of a transformed life in Jesus Christ.
(If you want to know more, see Wiencek's An Imperfect God, pp. 33-40.)
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids, and Breakdown on Bethlehem Street.
Who Is This Character?
by Sandra Herrmann
John 1:6-8, 19-28
As I was leaving my favorite restaurant one afternoon, I saw a car parked in the lot covered with homemade "bumper stickers." I mean, covered! The bumpers, of course, were covered, but so were the trunk, the doors, the front fenders, and even most of the hood. There was barely space to see what the color of the car might be. It looked to be a black-and-white car with a few touches of RED magic marker for emphasis. And, as you might guess, all of the writing was from the Bible.
I didn't want to get too close to the car for fear that he would come out and accuse me of touching anything. I've had a bit of experience with mentally unstable people, and I wanted to avoid being delayed in getting home with my carry-out. But I did wonder what kinds of things he had written for my edification, so I stopped and peered into the car to make sure he wasn't in it, and then started reading.
Unfortunately, he had written much of the verses in a state of agitation, so it was difficult to read much of it. What I did make out, however, was exactly what I had expected: warnings from the Old Testament about the Day of the Lord, or the Day of Retribution. The red verses and words were all "REPENT!" sorts of messages. No surprise there either.
I wondered, not for the first time, why most self-proclaimed prophets are so negative! Why is there never a person holding a poster saying, "Surprise! God really loves you!" with the last words in RED so everyone will concentrate on that amazing fact? Why is it always that we are all such sick sinners that God can barely stand us, so you'd better watch out, 'cause Messiah is coming to town? (And yes, he's making a list and checking it twice.)
Not that we don't need to be reminded that God really does know what's going on with us. Not that we're perfect, sweet, and clean every minute of every day -- we aren't, of course, but then that would be a bit of a boring life to live, don't you think? I mean, getting into food fights is pretty funny until you have to clean it up. And my dogs love to go out and roll in the muck. That's just doggy nature, and I suspect that to God, food fights and rolling in muck are pretty much on the same level. Pretty fun and funny until you have to clean up.
Of course there's that more serious side of not being perfect -- when we fail our family, our boss, or a friend who was counting on us. When we lie, cheat, and feed our baser natures, we need to be called on it so we can steer clear of a more serious mess we're doing our best to get into. But I think that those are precisely the moments we need to know that God loves us, just as we needed to be assured by our parents' love when we made a mess as kids. I can remember moments when I was most interested in the toes of my shoes as my dad was demanding to know "where I'd parked my brain" when I had gotten into my latest mess.
I know that this man who has plastered his car with all these warnings is operating out of his sense of his own inability to understand God's love. But he probably also is angry at the state of the world. And there are certainly enough things to moan about, from Russian Prime Minister Putin trying to grab back the Eastern European countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union to the cost of apples this fall. ($1.49 for three apples? Are you kidding?) Many of us are either out looking for a job or we're worried about losing our current job, especially since many companies are dismissing their oldest, highest-paid employees first, in order to save money. And where is a man or woman of sixty going to be hired? It's a hard world we live in, and it's easy to be frightened of the future.
So it's an easy road to blaming the politicians for all of our problems, as our most recent election proves yet again. It wasn't all that long ago that we voted out the Republicans because all of the problems of the world were their fault. Now it's the turn of the Democrats to be replaced and forgotten about or ignored until the next election, though our anger and disappointment will probably not be gone for long.
This guy with all the Bible verses on his car actually is a newcomer to this prophetic role. We'd had a guy who spent his time driving all over town with a car covered in Bible verses, the corners of the pages rattling in the wind as he drove. He died a few months ago; there was quite a write-up about him in the paper. He was found in his apartment after nobody saw him getting into or out of his car for a couple of days. It made me a little sad when I read about it, so as strange as it seems, I'm glad this new guy has taken up the gauntlet. His Bible verses and warnings aren't as neatly written as his forerunner's were. But then he's only recently started up. I could tell, because there was only one layer of paper glued to the car. If he sticks with it, I'm sure the prophecies and warnings will be clearer and the paper will gain depth. After all, there's a lot of writing about sin in the Bible.
I still wish he'd add a few verses like John 3:16 and 17.
Prophecy of Good Fortune
by Sandra Herrmann
Psalm 126
Our husbands had gone out camping along a small stream not too far from home. Their plan was to sleep in a pup tent and canoe by day down to the Black River and back. Maybe they'd do some fishing and cook it up when they got back to the tent in the evening. It was to be an idyllic two-day break from the stress of being social workers in a poverty-stricken county in rural Wisconsin.
But a phone call had come from Bob's mother -- his father had had a heart attack and was in intensive care. He was expected to survive but with what limitations no one knew. Bob's wife Sheila and I went off in search of the guys to give Bob the news. (This was long before there were cell phones.) We had found their campsite, but the canoe was gone, and so were they. We decided to drive down to a small take-out point close to the Black River to see if we could intercept them there.
At this point of the river, the trees had been cut down and there were only a few at some distance from the ramped dirt road, so all around us was a sea of grass that had grown about three feet high. It was late summer so the grass was tassled, the heads resembling wheat or some other grain, but without edible seeds. As we waded through the grass, I let my hands run over it, and tugged gently on a few of the heads. They were springy and lush and brought back a childhood memory.
My family was living in a small town when I was about five or six. Our yard was large and bordered on one side by train tracks, a spur line that was used several days a week for milk pick-up at the dairy right across the street. That track wasn't particularly well tended, probably because it was so short and the train was always going very slowly into the dairy yard. All along the spur grew this same sort of tall grass, and to a small child, it was magical because I could literally hide in it, if I squatted down.
The small church my mother and I attended was Evangelical United Brethren, which meant we sang a lot during worship and Sunday school. The Sunday school superintendent picked songs from the hymnal that she thought children would enjoy, so that when we went to church we would have a sense of how to sing along. Often we would receive a picture that illustrated the hymn on one side of the paper with the words on the back of the page. This worked very well for me -- I knew perhaps a score of hymns by the time we moved away and had pictures in my mind to help me remember them.
One of my favorite songs was "Bringing In The Sheaves." And since these grasses along the train tracks looked so much like the sheaves in the picture I had been given, I would go out and pick them, laying them over my arm as the ladies in the picture had done, and sing this song as I walked along. When I had picked an armful, I would march around the driveway, singing lustfully, "We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves!"
Without thinking, I started singing that song as I walked through the tall grass. My friend was not amused. "This is not the time to be singing like that! We're bringing really bad news to my husband. Will you please settle down?"
I was mightily embarrassed. How could I have been so thoughtless? I had hurt my friend! Had I no compassion?
Had I known the setting for Psalm 126, the source of that hymn, I might have been able to help her with her anxiety. The people of Israel were facing hard times, not for the first time. They were remembering the exile in Babylon, from which they had been freed by the invasion of Babylon by Cyrus the Meade: "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream." But later, they were again under pressure -- this time by "a drought that threatened the fall harvest" according to The New Interpreter's Study Bible. They call on God to "restore our fortunes" and conclude with the words that inspired that old hymn I loved so much:
Those who go out weeping,
Bearing the seed for sowing,
Shall come home with shouts of joy,
Carrying their sheaves.
How hard it is for us to rely completely on God. In the worst times we can still sing, hoping that "we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves."
By the way, Bob's dad not only survived, he recovered.
Sandra Herrmann is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 14, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 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.
"Make It a Rule" by Frank Ramirez
"Who Is This Character?" by Sandra Herrmann
"Prophecy of Good Fortune" by Sandra Herrmann
* * * * * * *
Make It a Rule
by Frank Ramirez
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.
-- 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22
George Washington, remembered as a towering figure in our time, was just as respected in his own. The Founding Fathers, composed of brilliant minds from the thirteen colonies who were giants in their own way, could not imagine the diverse regions from which they came uniting behind anyone but General George Washington during the Revolutionary War, and later behind anyone but President George Washington after the constitution was ratified.
Nevertheless, he was acutely aware from an early age of his shortcomings. Although he was part of the highly respected and privileged planter class in the colony of Virginia, he knew he was relatively uneducated and believed he was lacking in the social graces that a person of his standing ought to display. That belief was reinforced by his experiences when he came into contact with British military officers whose attitude only reminded him that in their eyes he did not measure up.
Washington struggled with his own high spirits and a lack of discipline typical for his contemporaries. Young Virginia gentlemen acted impetuously without any concern for consequences or what others might think. Washington therefore came to believe that in order to improve himself it was up to him to adopt a disciplined approach to change. If he intended to make something of himself, he needed to turn to outside resources, self-help manuals if you will, and study them constantly.
According to historian Henry Wiencek, author of An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America, Washington's rules came primarily from three different sources that were familiar to other young Virginians of his era. These were Seneca's Morals, a manual with French origins known as The Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, and the tragedy Cato, written by Joseph Addison.
From the Latin writer Seneca, Washington learned that it was important to avoid anger at all costs, because it could lead the unwary to disaster. Seneca encouraged a reasoned, philosophical approach to life. Sayings that meant a lot to Washington included:
An honest man can never be outdone in courtesy.
A good man can never be miserable, nor a wicked man happy.
A sensual life is a miserable life.
Hope and fear are the bane of human life.
The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us.
The Joseph Addison play, extremely popular in Washington's day, was based on the life of Cato the Younger, who lived during the time of the rise of imperial power that culminated in the accession of Julius Caesar to the post of emperor. Cato died rather than give up his freedoms, and from this play Washington was impressed with the need to put one's liberty first.
Finally, Washington keenly felt the need to learn the proper manners in order to conduct himself in society. From The Rules of Civility Washington learned that one was not to clean one's teeth at dinner with the table cloth, nor talk with one's mouth full of meat. Washington also learned: "Rinse not your Mouth in the Presence of others, Kill no vermin as Fleas, lice, ticks in the Sight of Others, and Spit not in the fire."
Washington especially gleaned how important it was to show respect for others and to take the feelings of others into account. One was not to speak about people who were absent, nor to show outward feelings of gladness about the misfortune of others. This approach to self-discipline made it possible for him to meet both victory and disaster with calmness and poise, to remain stoic in the face of sharp criticism from his peers, and to listen and learn from others while remaining at liberty to follow his own chosen course if that seemed better to him.
This discipline made him who he was in reality and in the eyes of his contemporaries who admired him.
The apostle Paul invites his fellow Christians in Thessalonika to also consider a list of rules as an approach to self-discipline in the face of sensual temptations in a pagan world. Giving thanks, rejoicing, encouraging the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community, attention to the scripture, testing the truth of God's word, holding fast to the good and abstaining from evil, these are the beginning of a transformed life in Jesus Christ.
(If you want to know more, see Wiencek's An Imperfect God, pp. 33-40.)
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids, and Breakdown on Bethlehem Street.
Who Is This Character?
by Sandra Herrmann
John 1:6-8, 19-28
As I was leaving my favorite restaurant one afternoon, I saw a car parked in the lot covered with homemade "bumper stickers." I mean, covered! The bumpers, of course, were covered, but so were the trunk, the doors, the front fenders, and even most of the hood. There was barely space to see what the color of the car might be. It looked to be a black-and-white car with a few touches of RED magic marker for emphasis. And, as you might guess, all of the writing was from the Bible.
I didn't want to get too close to the car for fear that he would come out and accuse me of touching anything. I've had a bit of experience with mentally unstable people, and I wanted to avoid being delayed in getting home with my carry-out. But I did wonder what kinds of things he had written for my edification, so I stopped and peered into the car to make sure he wasn't in it, and then started reading.
Unfortunately, he had written much of the verses in a state of agitation, so it was difficult to read much of it. What I did make out, however, was exactly what I had expected: warnings from the Old Testament about the Day of the Lord, or the Day of Retribution. The red verses and words were all "REPENT!" sorts of messages. No surprise there either.
I wondered, not for the first time, why most self-proclaimed prophets are so negative! Why is there never a person holding a poster saying, "Surprise! God really loves you!" with the last words in RED so everyone will concentrate on that amazing fact? Why is it always that we are all such sick sinners that God can barely stand us, so you'd better watch out, 'cause Messiah is coming to town? (And yes, he's making a list and checking it twice.)
Not that we don't need to be reminded that God really does know what's going on with us. Not that we're perfect, sweet, and clean every minute of every day -- we aren't, of course, but then that would be a bit of a boring life to live, don't you think? I mean, getting into food fights is pretty funny until you have to clean it up. And my dogs love to go out and roll in the muck. That's just doggy nature, and I suspect that to God, food fights and rolling in muck are pretty much on the same level. Pretty fun and funny until you have to clean up.
Of course there's that more serious side of not being perfect -- when we fail our family, our boss, or a friend who was counting on us. When we lie, cheat, and feed our baser natures, we need to be called on it so we can steer clear of a more serious mess we're doing our best to get into. But I think that those are precisely the moments we need to know that God loves us, just as we needed to be assured by our parents' love when we made a mess as kids. I can remember moments when I was most interested in the toes of my shoes as my dad was demanding to know "where I'd parked my brain" when I had gotten into my latest mess.
I know that this man who has plastered his car with all these warnings is operating out of his sense of his own inability to understand God's love. But he probably also is angry at the state of the world. And there are certainly enough things to moan about, from Russian Prime Minister Putin trying to grab back the Eastern European countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union to the cost of apples this fall. ($1.49 for three apples? Are you kidding?) Many of us are either out looking for a job or we're worried about losing our current job, especially since many companies are dismissing their oldest, highest-paid employees first, in order to save money. And where is a man or woman of sixty going to be hired? It's a hard world we live in, and it's easy to be frightened of the future.
So it's an easy road to blaming the politicians for all of our problems, as our most recent election proves yet again. It wasn't all that long ago that we voted out the Republicans because all of the problems of the world were their fault. Now it's the turn of the Democrats to be replaced and forgotten about or ignored until the next election, though our anger and disappointment will probably not be gone for long.
This guy with all the Bible verses on his car actually is a newcomer to this prophetic role. We'd had a guy who spent his time driving all over town with a car covered in Bible verses, the corners of the pages rattling in the wind as he drove. He died a few months ago; there was quite a write-up about him in the paper. He was found in his apartment after nobody saw him getting into or out of his car for a couple of days. It made me a little sad when I read about it, so as strange as it seems, I'm glad this new guy has taken up the gauntlet. His Bible verses and warnings aren't as neatly written as his forerunner's were. But then he's only recently started up. I could tell, because there was only one layer of paper glued to the car. If he sticks with it, I'm sure the prophecies and warnings will be clearer and the paper will gain depth. After all, there's a lot of writing about sin in the Bible.
I still wish he'd add a few verses like John 3:16 and 17.
Prophecy of Good Fortune
by Sandra Herrmann
Psalm 126
Our husbands had gone out camping along a small stream not too far from home. Their plan was to sleep in a pup tent and canoe by day down to the Black River and back. Maybe they'd do some fishing and cook it up when they got back to the tent in the evening. It was to be an idyllic two-day break from the stress of being social workers in a poverty-stricken county in rural Wisconsin.
But a phone call had come from Bob's mother -- his father had had a heart attack and was in intensive care. He was expected to survive but with what limitations no one knew. Bob's wife Sheila and I went off in search of the guys to give Bob the news. (This was long before there were cell phones.) We had found their campsite, but the canoe was gone, and so were they. We decided to drive down to a small take-out point close to the Black River to see if we could intercept them there.
At this point of the river, the trees had been cut down and there were only a few at some distance from the ramped dirt road, so all around us was a sea of grass that had grown about three feet high. It was late summer so the grass was tassled, the heads resembling wheat or some other grain, but without edible seeds. As we waded through the grass, I let my hands run over it, and tugged gently on a few of the heads. They were springy and lush and brought back a childhood memory.
My family was living in a small town when I was about five or six. Our yard was large and bordered on one side by train tracks, a spur line that was used several days a week for milk pick-up at the dairy right across the street. That track wasn't particularly well tended, probably because it was so short and the train was always going very slowly into the dairy yard. All along the spur grew this same sort of tall grass, and to a small child, it was magical because I could literally hide in it, if I squatted down.
The small church my mother and I attended was Evangelical United Brethren, which meant we sang a lot during worship and Sunday school. The Sunday school superintendent picked songs from the hymnal that she thought children would enjoy, so that when we went to church we would have a sense of how to sing along. Often we would receive a picture that illustrated the hymn on one side of the paper with the words on the back of the page. This worked very well for me -- I knew perhaps a score of hymns by the time we moved away and had pictures in my mind to help me remember them.
One of my favorite songs was "Bringing In The Sheaves." And since these grasses along the train tracks looked so much like the sheaves in the picture I had been given, I would go out and pick them, laying them over my arm as the ladies in the picture had done, and sing this song as I walked along. When I had picked an armful, I would march around the driveway, singing lustfully, "We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves!"
Without thinking, I started singing that song as I walked through the tall grass. My friend was not amused. "This is not the time to be singing like that! We're bringing really bad news to my husband. Will you please settle down?"
I was mightily embarrassed. How could I have been so thoughtless? I had hurt my friend! Had I no compassion?
Had I known the setting for Psalm 126, the source of that hymn, I might have been able to help her with her anxiety. The people of Israel were facing hard times, not for the first time. They were remembering the exile in Babylon, from which they had been freed by the invasion of Babylon by Cyrus the Meade: "When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream." But later, they were again under pressure -- this time by "a drought that threatened the fall harvest" according to The New Interpreter's Study Bible. They call on God to "restore our fortunes" and conclude with the words that inspired that old hymn I loved so much:
Those who go out weeping,
Bearing the seed for sowing,
Shall come home with shouts of joy,
Carrying their sheaves.
How hard it is for us to rely completely on God. In the worst times we can still sing, hoping that "we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves."
By the way, Bob's dad not only survived, he recovered.
Sandra Herrmann is a retired United Methodist pastor living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 14, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 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.
