Not the Hour or the Day
Stories
Contents
“Not the Hour or the Day” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Closer To Heaven” by David O. Bales
“Power To Change Nature … and People” by David O. Bales
Not the Hour or the Day
by Peter Andrew Smith
Acts 1:1-11
“God, I know that I’m supposed to have faith and trust,” Paul said softly as he sat on the bench outside of the nursing home. “Yet a part of me wishes you would tell me when.”
After all the tests, he had asked the doctors how bad his illness was, and they talked about possibilities and new treatments. He knew they couldn’t tell him how long he had to live but he knew his days were getting shorter on earth. He just wished he knew how short. Paul was realistic. He was old and there wasn’t much fight left in him even if the medicines worked. He was also tired.
Paul wasn’t afraid of death. He believed that Jesus died for him and knew that when the time came that the forgiveness and grace of Christ would carry him from this world to what God had prepared. Besides Ginnie had been gone for more than five years now and there was a part of him that desperately wanted to finish life and move on to what came next. A smile touched his lips.
He couldn’t wait to see Ginnie again. He imagined he would see her as the way she was when they first met- vibrant and laughing. He would see his brother Tim, all his aunts and uncles and of course, his parents. As he sat on the bench, he was struck by the fact that most of the people he knew had died. His friends, neighbors, in fact -- most of his family were gone. Only he remained.
He felt a twinge in his chest and wondered if it was a sign that his time was over, but it passed as quickly as it began. Just another sign of getting old. Just another thing for him to notice about this body that was well past its best before date.
He sighed and focused on the tree just across the road. It was so tall and majestic, and its leaves reached up to heaven. He remembered when it only seemed like yesterday that the leaves had fallen for the winter and the tree had been bare and lifeless. He tilted his head. It wasn’t really lifeless though because when the warmer weather arrived the buds appeared, and the tree sprang to life again and started anew. He wished he could start anew. He wished he knew how much longer he had to wait.
“Paul? Are you okay?” Joyce asked.
Paul looked over to see Joyce slowly making her way to the bench. She tried her best, but her hips and knees were bad and age had not been kind to her.
“I’m fine. I was just sitting her thinking is all.” He moved down. “Would you like to sit for a few moments?”
“I sure would.” Joyce sat down beside him. “Sometimes that is what I do here, too. I just sit and think about my George and all the other people I have known.”
“Yeah, I think of Ginnie every day.” Paul smiled. “I can’t wait to see her again.”
Joyce nodded. “Sometimes I wish I knew how much longer I had to wait.”
“I was just sitting here wondering the same thing.” Paul looked over at her. “What do you think?”
“I think we can’t know that.” Joyce paused for a moment. “That’s one of those things where we can’t know the hour or the day.”
“I guess.” Paul sighed. “In some ways we’re like the disciples waiting for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit. We know there is something great just around the corner for us, but we don’t know when it will come.”
The two were quiet for a few moments before Joyce spoke. “Of course, we do know what to do while we’re waiting.”
“I suppose we do,” Paul said. “Are you looking for company at church this morning?”
“When you sing it reminds me of my brother.” Joyce smiled. “He loved to sing so.”
“Ginnie got me singing in the choir at church. I never really sang before then.”
“Really? You have a lovely voice.”
“Thanks. Is Pastor Doug speaking today?”
Joyce thought for a moment. “I believe he is. My, he preaches a nice sermon.”
“That he does. I enjoy his messages. They help me grow in my faith.”
“Nice to know there is something we can grow in other than age, isn’t there?” Joyce winked at him.
Paul laughed and offered her his arm. “Let’s go and sing some praises to God and practice for when we both get to heaven.”
Joyce smiled and he helped her walk back inside. As they headed toward the nursing home chapel, Paul realized that as long as he knew what he was supposed to do while he waited for the promises of God to be fulfilled, he was okay not knowing when those promises would happen.
* * *
Closer To Heaven
by David O. Bales
Luke 24:44-53
Grant finally admitted that he didn’t like Joel, and he believed that Joel knew it. Joel got under Grant’s skin, needling him in a way that looked innocent. Grant didn’t accept it as the usual kind of joking that young men did with one another. Like when he drove by next to the church where Grant was spading a plot of ground beside the parking lot. It would grow fresh fruits and vegetables for the congregation and the needy in the community. He’d had a load of manure delivered—fresh and still steaming. He was spreading it and spading it in. Joel rattled up beside the garden in his Jeep with the loose muffler, rolled down his window, and yelled, with a smile of course, “Pastor! Doing a little sermon preparation?” Grant had to smile and wave as Joel drove away laughing his irritating cackle.
Today Grant was on the rickety extension ladder climbing toward the steeple. He’d never liked heights and always feared ladders. But it was April and, no matter how often he’d put out the request, no one had volunteered to take down the Christmas lights. Some older women had complained, “The lights are still up there, Pastor.” So, Tuesday morning first thing, right after his prayer and study of the coming Sunday’s scripture texts, he was doing what he’d never liked, climbing a ladder at its full extension for the only reasons that people complained, and he needed a paycheck to support his growing family of a 19 month old girl and his wife already overdue with their second child.
It wasn’t a good state of mind to be climbing higher, and the breeze just picked up. Maybe he should’ve started with the shorter ladder on the lower lights. He hadn’t thought ahead of how he’d release the lights. Detach the end and roll up the string or start in the middle and let them sag? Then Joel roared to a stop, rolled down his window, stuck his head out and yelled, “Pastor! You commencing upon a higher calling?” And he drove away laughing.
Grant angrily plucked another clip of the wire loose and wondered why Joel drove by the church so many times. His home was a quarter mile east and his business a quarter mile west. But a dozen times a day—it seemed—he drove by. Grant never saw him walk the route. A little exercising would help his large belly.
He might be occupied with his hands, but Grant had developed one good habit in his beginning years as a pastor: contemplating the text he’d preach on next. It was about the only spiritual discipline he’d maintained in these last two years. No matter what he tried, no matter what he suggested to the congregation, ministry didn’t seem to occur. It was like a neutral pastorate: nothing bad happened, nothing good either. Grant prayed that Jesus would open his mind to understand the scriptures as he did with his disciples after his resurrection. He saw two giant differences between himself and Jesus’ disciples: They had seen Jesus while he was on earth and they didn’t have sermons to prepare, sermons demanded as regularly as traffic lights turned green. Sometimes, it seemed, sooner.
He released another clip on the wire and gazed across the town, wondering if this was how it appeared to Jesus as he ascended. He considered raising his hands as Jesus did and blessing the town. Another breeze flitted by him and he decided he would bless the town without a raising of the hands.
He thought about Jesus’ disciples filled with joy even though Jesus was leaving them. Joel drove by again, going home this time, and honked. Grant figured he’d have more joy if Joel left him alone.
In his mind he rolled over another phrase from scripture for the coming Sunday: “clothed with power.” “Clothed” made him realize he hadn’t put on his jacket. Not a good choice, but he wasn’t going to feel his way backwards down the ladder rung by rung just for his jacket. Maybe the chill would motivate him to move faster.
“Clothed with power.” When he was an assistant pastor for his first three years in ministry, he was in a large congregation. But, as a neighboring pastor told him, “Assistant pastors have no power to get anything done.” So it had seemed. But here as a solo pastor? Couldn’t he get anyone to progress in their Christian lives? Advance in their praying? Creep forward in obedient service?
He heard Joel’s Jeep and ducked his head so he wouldn’t be looking towards him as he passed. As he did, the ladder shifted with him. A small shift, but he barely noticed. He was already leaning, so he reached farther for the next clip. The ladder more than shifted. The top slid sideways three feet, lodging under a cornice, Grant barely hanging on. He held one foot solidly on a rung and he swung the other sideways trying to grasp the side rail. Doing so, he tangled in the sagging string of lights. He was stuck. Fairly safe for the moment but stuck, and it took more strength to hang on sideways to a tipping ladder than merely to stand on one.
He passed from the first stage of panic—took about a second and a half—into looking around wildly for anything else to grip. Seeing nothing, he spent the next terrible minute acknowledging how embarrassed he would be yelling for help.
“Pastor! Hang on!” It was Joel looking up from beneath him.
“The other ladder’s on the north side of the church,” Grant yelled.
Joel was back in a zip, ratcheting the shorter ladder up the wall under Grant. Once it was in place Joel stood on the bottom rung, his extra heft anchoring it well in the lawn. It was going to be a tricky dismount. Grant couldn’t hold on and look down to see his feet. Joel directed him, “Your right foot two more inches to the left,” Joel said, “The left! Okay, and down with your right foot. Got it. Now your left to the right six inches to the right. And down six inches.” Grant felt his leg freed of the sagging lights. “That’s it. You can let go with your left hand and just put it against the wall while you reach around with your right.”
On the ground, Grant was huffing and puffing. Joel slapped him on the back. “Excellent! Way to go!”
“I’ve always been scared of heights, hated ladders.” He bent over and took more deep breaths. “Can’t get anybody to take down those lights.”
“Hey,” Joel said, whapping him again on the back, “I can do that. Sure, farther from earth, closer to heaven.”
“Maybe in this case,” Grant said with relief.
Joel chuckled and scurried up the ladder. For a chunky guy he showed the agility of a monkey. He kept climbing and repeating, “Farther from earth, closer to heaven,” and giggling. This time his laughter didn’t bother Grant at all.
Preaching point: Different kinds of ascensions.
* * *
Power To Change Nature … and People
by David O. Bales
Ephesians 1:15-23
When Leyla had stepped out onto Yavapai Point and peered across to the Grand Canyon’s north wall, it resembled a giant layer cake. But she shouldn’t have said so. It earned Miss Tettering’s stern look with her hand on her hip, and then the rest of the middle school youth group laughing at her. Leyla didn’t understand why people laughed at her differently than they used to. When her quip about the cake didn’t work, she’d thought of adding that the Colorado River looked the color of pigs. Then someone would suggest she wanted to eat bacon. In last year’s sixth grade Sunday School class she was the jolly joker. Now the laughter felt like scorn.
She stood red-eyed in front of the restroom mirror in the Grand Canyon National Park Visitor’s Center. She’d been at the mirror for half a minute pretending to brush her hair. It was a mess from the wind, but it was always scraggly around her fat face. When she’d whined to her parents that they’d created a beast with a wide face, ready to look fat with one extra calorie, her father tried to soothe her, “No, no. Definitely within normal limits.”
Her mother, hospital chief of staff, had said, “Poor BMI.” Her mother didn’t grin when Leyla asked if that was anything like a BMW. Her father didn’t mind. He tried to hug her as she’d huffed from the room.
She pulled the hair from her eyes. A new zit in front of her right ear! She was reaching with both hands to pop it when three of the youth group’s skinny girls giggled in. She yanked her hair over the zit.
Charlotte and DeeDee looked her way, still giggling, Charlotte smirking, and each dashed into a stall. Nicole came to the mirror next to Leyla. “Golly, the wind,” Nicole said. She gave Leyla a nice smile. Maybe the girls had been laughing about her or maybe not; but, either way, Nicole liked her, and that made Leyla feel better.
“Miss Tettering’s sure in a twit,” Leyla said. “The lederhosen lady.”
“Letter what?”
“Lederhosen, those leather shorts she wears.”
“Whatever she wears, I think she got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Nicole said.
“Or the wrong side of the rack,” Leyla said, but Nicole didn’t catch the drift.
“This is the highlight of her summer,” Nicole said. “Brings a church group every year. This is the first time she’s brought the middle school group. She thinks the Grand Canyon’s the most beautiful place on earth. No wonder she teaches geology.”
“Yeah,” Leyla said, “repeating ‘Feast your eyes. Feast your eyes.’ Then she stares me down for saying something about food.”
“She just doesn’t know you,” Nicole said. “Actually, she doesn’t know any of us. If she did, she’d stop treating us like college students.
“‘277 miles. 277 miles from Glenn Canyon Dam to Hoover Dam’,” Leyla said, “Thought she was funny when she said that would be on the test, but nobody laughed.”
Charlotte and DeeDee came out of their stalls and washed their hands. Nicole said, “You coming?”
“In a minute.”
The three left, Charlotte in the lead, starting to giggle. Leyla remained at the mirror. She decided she wouldn’t pop the zit. Her mother said it could leave a scar. She patted her hair forward from her ears. Might work for a while. A couple of the other girls had zits, but not plastered on a fat face. And the girls had actual breasts, where Leyla seemed to grow only high chest bumps.
She couldn’t seem to get life going straight. The difference between this year’s church group and last year’s made it obvious. Who was she now with these kids? She felt like she’d let go of one trapeze bar without grasping the next, the net as far down as the Colorado River, if there were a net.
That morning in her Flagstaff motel room, Miss Tettering had gathered everyone for her morning devotional laced with information about the Grand Canyon. Leyla didn’t get a laugh when she rattled off the Canyon’s geological levels to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” She did, however, get a dirty look from Miss Tettering.
With a deep breath for courage, Leyla went out to join the rest. The wind immediately blew her hair away from her face. She was the last to arrive. Miss Tettering stared at her when she encouraged everyone to keep up.
The rest of the day didn’t get much better. The girls huddled together, the boys also in their little group, except that one always seemed nudging Charlotte. After dinner, Miss Tettering herded them into her motel room for a summary of the day. The kids spread out on the bed, sofa, chair and floor. Miss Tettering held her talk to ten minutes. The group could tell she was winding down and expected her to repeat her usual praise of God for the great order and beauty around them.
“Just water, millennia of water slowly eating through the earth. Think about the power of that stream, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a flood, scooping out this great canyon, excavating square miles of rock. We don’t see it happen, just the results of the power that has plowed through here. Give it a while, say a few million years, the Colorado will unearth further of the planet. Slow, steady power, almost hidden power.” She spoke now as though she’d had a new idea, “Like in the atom, whizzing around in everything, but showing up in solids, liquids and gasses.”
Leyla saw that Miss Tettering was trying too hard, smiling too broadly. The kids were either fidgeting or nearly asleep. She just didn’t know the middle school kids and what might make sense to them.
“That’s the power in our faith,” she said. She appeared desperate, like she’d realized that she needed to say something more helpful about faith. “Our faith is built on Jesus’ resurrection, power to bring life out of death, the power when Jesus was alive to do miracles and after his resurrection to ascend to heaven.” Leyla saw that Miss Tettering was almost panicking. “It’s power to break through the limits of what we know. It’s the fullness of God’s power to help people love and forgive and care more for others than themselves.” She glanced at the two boys starting a tickling match, but she continued, “Like … like the Glenn Canyon and Hoover Dams. Think they’re pretty big and stable, think they’re beyond removal? They’re a blip on the geographical screen. They’re like little corks in bottles as large as the Empire State Building. In geological terms, they’re doomed, existing for a speck of time.” She was trying hard to keep their attention. “One blink ago they weren’t here, and then next,” she raised herself on her tiptoes and, like a little child, gave a jump and clapped her hands, “pop, they’re gone!”
The kids were smothering their laughter. Leyla waited a second and blurted, “Like popping a giant zit.”
The kids screamed in laughter, some of them rolling on the floor. Leyla laughed longest; her head tipped back, not worrying about the zit. Miss Tettering stood before them looking serious. Then she smiled appreciatively and said, “Yes, Leyla, that kind of power.”
It was the first genuine laughter Leyla had gotten from the youth group for a month. Miss Tettering’s smile was pretty good too.
Preaching point: God’s power to change human relationships.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 13, 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.
“Not the Hour or the Day” by Peter Andrew Smith
“Closer To Heaven” by David O. Bales
“Power To Change Nature … and People” by David O. Bales
Not the Hour or the Day
by Peter Andrew Smith
Acts 1:1-11
“God, I know that I’m supposed to have faith and trust,” Paul said softly as he sat on the bench outside of the nursing home. “Yet a part of me wishes you would tell me when.”
After all the tests, he had asked the doctors how bad his illness was, and they talked about possibilities and new treatments. He knew they couldn’t tell him how long he had to live but he knew his days were getting shorter on earth. He just wished he knew how short. Paul was realistic. He was old and there wasn’t much fight left in him even if the medicines worked. He was also tired.
Paul wasn’t afraid of death. He believed that Jesus died for him and knew that when the time came that the forgiveness and grace of Christ would carry him from this world to what God had prepared. Besides Ginnie had been gone for more than five years now and there was a part of him that desperately wanted to finish life and move on to what came next. A smile touched his lips.
He couldn’t wait to see Ginnie again. He imagined he would see her as the way she was when they first met- vibrant and laughing. He would see his brother Tim, all his aunts and uncles and of course, his parents. As he sat on the bench, he was struck by the fact that most of the people he knew had died. His friends, neighbors, in fact -- most of his family were gone. Only he remained.
He felt a twinge in his chest and wondered if it was a sign that his time was over, but it passed as quickly as it began. Just another sign of getting old. Just another thing for him to notice about this body that was well past its best before date.
He sighed and focused on the tree just across the road. It was so tall and majestic, and its leaves reached up to heaven. He remembered when it only seemed like yesterday that the leaves had fallen for the winter and the tree had been bare and lifeless. He tilted his head. It wasn’t really lifeless though because when the warmer weather arrived the buds appeared, and the tree sprang to life again and started anew. He wished he could start anew. He wished he knew how much longer he had to wait.
“Paul? Are you okay?” Joyce asked.
Paul looked over to see Joyce slowly making her way to the bench. She tried her best, but her hips and knees were bad and age had not been kind to her.
“I’m fine. I was just sitting her thinking is all.” He moved down. “Would you like to sit for a few moments?”
“I sure would.” Joyce sat down beside him. “Sometimes that is what I do here, too. I just sit and think about my George and all the other people I have known.”
“Yeah, I think of Ginnie every day.” Paul smiled. “I can’t wait to see her again.”
Joyce nodded. “Sometimes I wish I knew how much longer I had to wait.”
“I was just sitting here wondering the same thing.” Paul looked over at her. “What do you think?”
“I think we can’t know that.” Joyce paused for a moment. “That’s one of those things where we can’t know the hour or the day.”
“I guess.” Paul sighed. “In some ways we’re like the disciples waiting for Jesus to send the Holy Spirit. We know there is something great just around the corner for us, but we don’t know when it will come.”
The two were quiet for a few moments before Joyce spoke. “Of course, we do know what to do while we’re waiting.”
“I suppose we do,” Paul said. “Are you looking for company at church this morning?”
“When you sing it reminds me of my brother.” Joyce smiled. “He loved to sing so.”
“Ginnie got me singing in the choir at church. I never really sang before then.”
“Really? You have a lovely voice.”
“Thanks. Is Pastor Doug speaking today?”
Joyce thought for a moment. “I believe he is. My, he preaches a nice sermon.”
“That he does. I enjoy his messages. They help me grow in my faith.”
“Nice to know there is something we can grow in other than age, isn’t there?” Joyce winked at him.
Paul laughed and offered her his arm. “Let’s go and sing some praises to God and practice for when we both get to heaven.”
Joyce smiled and he helped her walk back inside. As they headed toward the nursing home chapel, Paul realized that as long as he knew what he was supposed to do while he waited for the promises of God to be fulfilled, he was okay not knowing when those promises would happen.
* * *
Closer To Heaven
by David O. Bales
Luke 24:44-53
Grant finally admitted that he didn’t like Joel, and he believed that Joel knew it. Joel got under Grant’s skin, needling him in a way that looked innocent. Grant didn’t accept it as the usual kind of joking that young men did with one another. Like when he drove by next to the church where Grant was spading a plot of ground beside the parking lot. It would grow fresh fruits and vegetables for the congregation and the needy in the community. He’d had a load of manure delivered—fresh and still steaming. He was spreading it and spading it in. Joel rattled up beside the garden in his Jeep with the loose muffler, rolled down his window, and yelled, with a smile of course, “Pastor! Doing a little sermon preparation?” Grant had to smile and wave as Joel drove away laughing his irritating cackle.
Today Grant was on the rickety extension ladder climbing toward the steeple. He’d never liked heights and always feared ladders. But it was April and, no matter how often he’d put out the request, no one had volunteered to take down the Christmas lights. Some older women had complained, “The lights are still up there, Pastor.” So, Tuesday morning first thing, right after his prayer and study of the coming Sunday’s scripture texts, he was doing what he’d never liked, climbing a ladder at its full extension for the only reasons that people complained, and he needed a paycheck to support his growing family of a 19 month old girl and his wife already overdue with their second child.
It wasn’t a good state of mind to be climbing higher, and the breeze just picked up. Maybe he should’ve started with the shorter ladder on the lower lights. He hadn’t thought ahead of how he’d release the lights. Detach the end and roll up the string or start in the middle and let them sag? Then Joel roared to a stop, rolled down his window, stuck his head out and yelled, “Pastor! You commencing upon a higher calling?” And he drove away laughing.
Grant angrily plucked another clip of the wire loose and wondered why Joel drove by the church so many times. His home was a quarter mile east and his business a quarter mile west. But a dozen times a day—it seemed—he drove by. Grant never saw him walk the route. A little exercising would help his large belly.
He might be occupied with his hands, but Grant had developed one good habit in his beginning years as a pastor: contemplating the text he’d preach on next. It was about the only spiritual discipline he’d maintained in these last two years. No matter what he tried, no matter what he suggested to the congregation, ministry didn’t seem to occur. It was like a neutral pastorate: nothing bad happened, nothing good either. Grant prayed that Jesus would open his mind to understand the scriptures as he did with his disciples after his resurrection. He saw two giant differences between himself and Jesus’ disciples: They had seen Jesus while he was on earth and they didn’t have sermons to prepare, sermons demanded as regularly as traffic lights turned green. Sometimes, it seemed, sooner.
He released another clip on the wire and gazed across the town, wondering if this was how it appeared to Jesus as he ascended. He considered raising his hands as Jesus did and blessing the town. Another breeze flitted by him and he decided he would bless the town without a raising of the hands.
He thought about Jesus’ disciples filled with joy even though Jesus was leaving them. Joel drove by again, going home this time, and honked. Grant figured he’d have more joy if Joel left him alone.
In his mind he rolled over another phrase from scripture for the coming Sunday: “clothed with power.” “Clothed” made him realize he hadn’t put on his jacket. Not a good choice, but he wasn’t going to feel his way backwards down the ladder rung by rung just for his jacket. Maybe the chill would motivate him to move faster.
“Clothed with power.” When he was an assistant pastor for his first three years in ministry, he was in a large congregation. But, as a neighboring pastor told him, “Assistant pastors have no power to get anything done.” So it had seemed. But here as a solo pastor? Couldn’t he get anyone to progress in their Christian lives? Advance in their praying? Creep forward in obedient service?
He heard Joel’s Jeep and ducked his head so he wouldn’t be looking towards him as he passed. As he did, the ladder shifted with him. A small shift, but he barely noticed. He was already leaning, so he reached farther for the next clip. The ladder more than shifted. The top slid sideways three feet, lodging under a cornice, Grant barely hanging on. He held one foot solidly on a rung and he swung the other sideways trying to grasp the side rail. Doing so, he tangled in the sagging string of lights. He was stuck. Fairly safe for the moment but stuck, and it took more strength to hang on sideways to a tipping ladder than merely to stand on one.
He passed from the first stage of panic—took about a second and a half—into looking around wildly for anything else to grip. Seeing nothing, he spent the next terrible minute acknowledging how embarrassed he would be yelling for help.
“Pastor! Hang on!” It was Joel looking up from beneath him.
“The other ladder’s on the north side of the church,” Grant yelled.
Joel was back in a zip, ratcheting the shorter ladder up the wall under Grant. Once it was in place Joel stood on the bottom rung, his extra heft anchoring it well in the lawn. It was going to be a tricky dismount. Grant couldn’t hold on and look down to see his feet. Joel directed him, “Your right foot two more inches to the left,” Joel said, “The left! Okay, and down with your right foot. Got it. Now your left to the right six inches to the right. And down six inches.” Grant felt his leg freed of the sagging lights. “That’s it. You can let go with your left hand and just put it against the wall while you reach around with your right.”
On the ground, Grant was huffing and puffing. Joel slapped him on the back. “Excellent! Way to go!”
“I’ve always been scared of heights, hated ladders.” He bent over and took more deep breaths. “Can’t get anybody to take down those lights.”
“Hey,” Joel said, whapping him again on the back, “I can do that. Sure, farther from earth, closer to heaven.”
“Maybe in this case,” Grant said with relief.
Joel chuckled and scurried up the ladder. For a chunky guy he showed the agility of a monkey. He kept climbing and repeating, “Farther from earth, closer to heaven,” and giggling. This time his laughter didn’t bother Grant at all.
Preaching point: Different kinds of ascensions.
* * *
Power To Change Nature … and People
by David O. Bales
Ephesians 1:15-23
When Leyla had stepped out onto Yavapai Point and peered across to the Grand Canyon’s north wall, it resembled a giant layer cake. But she shouldn’t have said so. It earned Miss Tettering’s stern look with her hand on her hip, and then the rest of the middle school youth group laughing at her. Leyla didn’t understand why people laughed at her differently than they used to. When her quip about the cake didn’t work, she’d thought of adding that the Colorado River looked the color of pigs. Then someone would suggest she wanted to eat bacon. In last year’s sixth grade Sunday School class she was the jolly joker. Now the laughter felt like scorn.
She stood red-eyed in front of the restroom mirror in the Grand Canyon National Park Visitor’s Center. She’d been at the mirror for half a minute pretending to brush her hair. It was a mess from the wind, but it was always scraggly around her fat face. When she’d whined to her parents that they’d created a beast with a wide face, ready to look fat with one extra calorie, her father tried to soothe her, “No, no. Definitely within normal limits.”
Her mother, hospital chief of staff, had said, “Poor BMI.” Her mother didn’t grin when Leyla asked if that was anything like a BMW. Her father didn’t mind. He tried to hug her as she’d huffed from the room.
She pulled the hair from her eyes. A new zit in front of her right ear! She was reaching with both hands to pop it when three of the youth group’s skinny girls giggled in. She yanked her hair over the zit.
Charlotte and DeeDee looked her way, still giggling, Charlotte smirking, and each dashed into a stall. Nicole came to the mirror next to Leyla. “Golly, the wind,” Nicole said. She gave Leyla a nice smile. Maybe the girls had been laughing about her or maybe not; but, either way, Nicole liked her, and that made Leyla feel better.
“Miss Tettering’s sure in a twit,” Leyla said. “The lederhosen lady.”
“Letter what?”
“Lederhosen, those leather shorts she wears.”
“Whatever she wears, I think she got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Nicole said.
“Or the wrong side of the rack,” Leyla said, but Nicole didn’t catch the drift.
“This is the highlight of her summer,” Nicole said. “Brings a church group every year. This is the first time she’s brought the middle school group. She thinks the Grand Canyon’s the most beautiful place on earth. No wonder she teaches geology.”
“Yeah,” Leyla said, “repeating ‘Feast your eyes. Feast your eyes.’ Then she stares me down for saying something about food.”
“She just doesn’t know you,” Nicole said. “Actually, she doesn’t know any of us. If she did, she’d stop treating us like college students.
“‘277 miles. 277 miles from Glenn Canyon Dam to Hoover Dam’,” Leyla said, “Thought she was funny when she said that would be on the test, but nobody laughed.”
Charlotte and DeeDee came out of their stalls and washed their hands. Nicole said, “You coming?”
“In a minute.”
The three left, Charlotte in the lead, starting to giggle. Leyla remained at the mirror. She decided she wouldn’t pop the zit. Her mother said it could leave a scar. She patted her hair forward from her ears. Might work for a while. A couple of the other girls had zits, but not plastered on a fat face. And the girls had actual breasts, where Leyla seemed to grow only high chest bumps.
She couldn’t seem to get life going straight. The difference between this year’s church group and last year’s made it obvious. Who was she now with these kids? She felt like she’d let go of one trapeze bar without grasping the next, the net as far down as the Colorado River, if there were a net.
That morning in her Flagstaff motel room, Miss Tettering had gathered everyone for her morning devotional laced with information about the Grand Canyon. Leyla didn’t get a laugh when she rattled off the Canyon’s geological levels to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” She did, however, get a dirty look from Miss Tettering.
With a deep breath for courage, Leyla went out to join the rest. The wind immediately blew her hair away from her face. She was the last to arrive. Miss Tettering stared at her when she encouraged everyone to keep up.
The rest of the day didn’t get much better. The girls huddled together, the boys also in their little group, except that one always seemed nudging Charlotte. After dinner, Miss Tettering herded them into her motel room for a summary of the day. The kids spread out on the bed, sofa, chair and floor. Miss Tettering held her talk to ten minutes. The group could tell she was winding down and expected her to repeat her usual praise of God for the great order and beauty around them.
“Just water, millennia of water slowly eating through the earth. Think about the power of that stream, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a flood, scooping out this great canyon, excavating square miles of rock. We don’t see it happen, just the results of the power that has plowed through here. Give it a while, say a few million years, the Colorado will unearth further of the planet. Slow, steady power, almost hidden power.” She spoke now as though she’d had a new idea, “Like in the atom, whizzing around in everything, but showing up in solids, liquids and gasses.”
Leyla saw that Miss Tettering was trying too hard, smiling too broadly. The kids were either fidgeting or nearly asleep. She just didn’t know the middle school kids and what might make sense to them.
“That’s the power in our faith,” she said. She appeared desperate, like she’d realized that she needed to say something more helpful about faith. “Our faith is built on Jesus’ resurrection, power to bring life out of death, the power when Jesus was alive to do miracles and after his resurrection to ascend to heaven.” Leyla saw that Miss Tettering was almost panicking. “It’s power to break through the limits of what we know. It’s the fullness of God’s power to help people love and forgive and care more for others than themselves.” She glanced at the two boys starting a tickling match, but she continued, “Like … like the Glenn Canyon and Hoover Dams. Think they’re pretty big and stable, think they’re beyond removal? They’re a blip on the geographical screen. They’re like little corks in bottles as large as the Empire State Building. In geological terms, they’re doomed, existing for a speck of time.” She was trying hard to keep their attention. “One blink ago they weren’t here, and then next,” she raised herself on her tiptoes and, like a little child, gave a jump and clapped her hands, “pop, they’re gone!”
The kids were smothering their laughter. Leyla waited a second and blurted, “Like popping a giant zit.”
The kids screamed in laughter, some of them rolling on the floor. Leyla laughed longest; her head tipped back, not worrying about the zit. Miss Tettering stood before them looking serious. Then she smiled appreciatively and said, “Yes, Leyla, that kind of power.”
It was the first genuine laughter Leyla had gotten from the youth group for a month. Miss Tettering’s smile was pretty good too.
Preaching point: God’s power to change human relationships.
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StoryShare, May 13, 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.
