Picture Of Peace
Stories
A Story to Live By
Picture of Peace
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters...
Psalm 23:2
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all of the pictures, but there were only two he really liked and he had to choose between them.
One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace.
The other picture had mountains too. But these were rugged and bare. Above them was an angry sky from which rain fell, in which lightening played. Down the side of the mountains tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.
But when the King looked carefully, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock.
In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest ---- perfect peace.
Which picture do you think won the prize?
The king chose the second picture. Do you know why?
"Because," explained the King, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace."
Sharing Visions
Charlie's OK
by Bill Hoglund
"They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor nay scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Revelation 8:16--17
Back in the days of my hospital chaplaincy, assigned to what was then a newly opened retirement center connected to the hospital by a tunnel, I felt I always had the best of both worlds in my ministry. When I needed to "decompress" after some tough situation at the hospital, there were always the appreciative seniors at the retirement center, where my "boss," himself a retired clergyman, had carved an office for me out of what was originally intended to be a janitor's storage closet.
Charlie and Doris were an older couple in the building who had come from New Jersey. A native Midwesterner, I always got a kick out of their thick "Jersey" accents. I appreciated them both, but Charlie loved to regale me with golf stories from his career in sales. Many a deal was consummated on the course, and he must have been a pretty fair golfer in his day.
Quite some time later, when I heard things had gone bad for him after a stay in the hospital with pneumonia, I hurried up to the intensive care unit to be with him and his wife. We shared precious moments and prayers before he gently passed on to what he'd once referred to hopefully as his ultimate "promotion."
Later on that cool, crisp night as I got into the '67 Chevy Impala I drove, I noticed the clock of my battered ol' beater had stopped at 8:28. I didn't give it a second thought, since the clock and everything else in the car seemed to have a mind of its own. But the next morning, before her children gathered around her from different parts of the country, I received a phone call from Doris. "Rev. Bill, I know Charlie's OK. I just know it," she said calmly and without tears. "You see, the clock above our kitchen table stopped last night. That clock was a wedding present, and it has traveled all over the country with us. It stopped at exactly the same time the doctor said he ´officially' passed away ---- 8:28 p.m."
You cannot tell me that this was a coincidence, for "Christ has prepared a place for us" (John 3). Doris and I know Charlie's there, peacefully "promoted," maybe "wheeling and dealing" with the saints on some celestial golf course!
Bill Hoglund pastors the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Downers Grove, Illinois (with his clergy spouse, Laura). He has a Certificate of Gerontology and has served as a chaplain and health care administrator. He is engaged in improvisational and sketch comedy in Chicago, and likes to pretend he's a golfer, too. E--mail: revbill@mindspring.com.
Good Stories
Surely Goodness and Mercy
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Psalm 23:6
Timmy was a little five--year--old boy whose mom loved him very much, and being a worrier, she was concerned about him walking to school when he started kindergarten. She walked him to school the first couple of days, and at the end of the week, he came home from school and told his mother that he did not want her walking him to school every day. He wanted to be like the "big boys," he protested loudly.
So she had an idea of how to handle it. She asked a neighbor, Mrs. Goodnest, if she would please follow him to school in the mornings, staying at a distance so he probably wouldn't notice her. Mrs. Goodnest said that since she was up early with her toddler anyway, it would be a good way for them to get some exercise, and she agreed.
The next school day, Mrs. Goodnest and her little girl, Marcy, set out following behind Timmy as he walked to school with another neighbor boy he knew. She did this for the whole week.
As the boys walked and chatted, kicking stones and twigs, Timmy's little friend noticed the same lady was following them, as she seemed to have done every day all week.
Finally he said to Timmy, "Have you noticed that lady following us to school all week? Do you know her?"
Timmy nonchalantly replied, "Yeah, I know who she is."
The friend said, "Well, who is she?"
"That's just Shirley Goodnest," Timmy replied, "and her daughter Marcy."
"Shirley Goodnest? Who the heck is she and why is she following us?"
"Well," Timmy explained, "every night my mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers, 'cuz she worries about me so much. And in the psalm, it says, ´Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life,' so I guess I'll just have to get used to it!"
Scrap Pile
The Back Door of Heaven
by John Sumwalt
Revelation 7:9--17
I have been doing pastoral ministry now for almost 30 years. I preached my first sermon as a part-time student lay pastor at First United Methodist Church in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, on June 21, 1971. I was a 20--year--old college kid with hair down to my shoulders, one paisley tie which I wore every Sunday, some gift for public speaking, and not much to say. They were very kind to me there ---- and forgiving.
They almost fired me once because of something stupid I did ---- they should have, but they didn't ---- and I have been employed by the United Methodist Church ever since. It has given me the opportunity to do many more stupid things and to be forgiven again and again, much more than I deserve. Of course that's the thing about forgiveness. If we deserved it, we would never get it.
"It's like St. Peter at the pearly gates, who was busy rejecting the undeserving. Once in a while, however, he would turn around and find that those he had rejected were getting into heaven. He complained to Jesus, ´Look, I'm doing my job, but somehow those people got in anyway,' and Jesus responded, ´Oh, that's my mother. She's letting them in the back door.' " (Christian Century, May 2, 2001, p. 13).
I used to get discouraged in my early years in ministry because I often felt inadequate, and what's worse, I often was. But what I found most difficult was when people got angry with me and with each other, the disagreements and hurt feelings that inevitably occur from time to time in every congregation.
In one congregation there was a man who would never shake my hand after the service. He would make a point of going by me every Sunday. I would put out my hand and he would look away and walk on by. He had disagreed with something I said once in a sermon, and we weren't able to talk about it. He was too stubborn, and I was even more stubborn. I hope to talk to him about it in heaven someday. I expect we will both have a different perspective on the whole thing by then. I'll come back to that in a moment.
There is a word for what I just described; it is an old--fashioned word which we don't like to use much anymore: sin! We don't use it because we think it refers to individual acts ---- and deciding which individual acts are sins and which are not calls for judgment which most of us would rather avoid.
Paul Tillich says, "Sin does not mean an immoral act, that sin should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great all--pervading problem of our life" (The Shaking of the Foundations, p. 154). Tillich says, "Sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of a person from him or herself, and separation of all people from (God)."
Sin is a state; it is a condition that permeates every relationship, personal and international. Estrangement, broken hearts, broken dreams, hurt feelings, murder, destruction, war, chaos; these are the order of the day on most days in most lives on this planet.
That is what is so remarkable about the vision we hear from John's revelation, which is our text today. "After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne... with palm branches in their hands...."
Everybody was there in heaven together, all these nations that had warred against each other, destroyed each other's cities, killed each other, brutally murdered each other's families; they were all there together before the throne, waving palm branches, a symbol of peace. I will come back to that scene in a moment.
It is as the apostle Paul says in Romans 5:20, "where sin abounded [and we know sin does indeed abound] grace did much more abound."
When we were in Montello, we had the privilege of building a new church building with that congregation. It was a community that was growing rapidly, and as more and more young families came into the congregation it was soon apparent that our little building was not going to hold everyone. The problem was that this little congregation had never had very much money and couldn't imagine raising the enormous sum the new building would require. The project almost didn't get off the ground, not because there wasn't enough money, but rather because, as in every other group of human beings, there was plenty of sin.
It turned out there was also plenty of money. We brought in a consultant who helped the church do a capital fund--raising campaign ---- and we developed a congregational loan program in which members made loans to the building fund for whatever the going rate of interest was at that time. It was like buying bonds. And as the project got started and momentum began to build, there were a number of individuals who made substantial contributions. One man paid for the steeple, someone else donated money for the carpeting, and so on.
I learned something then that I have not forgotten. Whenever there is anxiety about money in a church, it is usually not really about money (God provides the money for whatever God calls the church to do). What puts a mission in danger are misunderstandings which lead to harsh words and hurt feelings. Many disagreements in churches are simply matters of misinformation. Misinformation leads to mistrust, mistrust leads to speculation, speculation leads to jumping to conclusions and the pointing of fingers.
Some disagreements in churches are about things that really matter. Someone does something stupid or hurtful ---- or there is a disagreement about some major decision facing the congregation.
I remember one building committee meeting in Montello when we had a disagreement about how to install the stained glass windows from the old building in the new building. Some on the committee wanted to keep the names of the families who had originally donated the windows, and some didn't. The two senior members of the committee, Eleanor Steinhaus (who was a retired funeral director) and Herb Sheller (retired from agribusiness), were on different sides of the issue.
These were two people that I and everyone else in that congregation both loved and greatly admired. Eleanor was the first woman funeral director in the state, and Herb was a very successful muck farmer. He raised carrots and mint and onions in the lowlands, in the muck around Marquette County. These two soft--spoken, gentle giants of the church got down in the muck that night and had it out over stained glass windows. The rest of us at the table kind of ducked down out of the line of fire while they each had their say. The sparks flew for about 45 minutes, and when they were finished the committee voted and the work on the building went forward. Herb and Eleanor remained good friends, and I would guess they are still friends in heaven. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound!
We had about a hundred disagreements like that before that building was completed. There were many times I wanted to quit. I would resign (in my mind) on Sunday evening, and by Tuesday morning, after a day off, I would be back at work.
I have learned slowly, over these thirty years, that nothing of any significance is ever accomplished in the church, in business, in government, in schools, in hospitals, in international relations or anywhere else, unless people are willing to work through disagreements and disappointments, overlook injustices and hurt feelings ---- and forgive one another.
Suzanne Guthrie tells in Christian Century this week that a friend "who served in the military during World War II (and is now a nun) was once at a conference with two men, a German and an American. As they wiped dishes one evening after dinner they exchanged stories about the war. The American told of the horror he felt as a young pilot during a particularly savage bombing of a city in Germany. He had orders to bomb a hospital, which he would know by the huge red cross painted on the roof. The second man ---- after regaining his composure ---- revealed that his wife had been giving birth to their baby in that very hospital when it was being bombed." Guthrie said her friend "tip--toed out of the room as the two men fell into each other's arms weeping." Then, she says, "imagine being in heaven, at the end of the world, where we might fall weeping upon one another, waves of reconciliation breaking upon us as we adjust ourselves to this dimension of pure love" (Christian Century, May 2, 2001, p. 13).
"After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands... the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; ...the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to the springs of the waters of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 7:9--10, 15--17).
There is a wonderful scene like this in the movie Chocolat, in which an old woman played by Judy Dench (who was nominated for an academy award for this performance) is shown dancing with her grandson. The grandson had been forbidden by his mother to see his grandmother, because she thought her mother was a bad influence on the child. But the child needs his grandmother, and with the help of the owner of the chocolate shop (played by Juliette Binoche) they become friends. On the eve of the grandmother's 70th birthday, the grandson sneaks away to attend her party. His mother comes looking for him and sees him dancing and laughing with his grandmother. As she watches them dance she is transformed. She sees her mother and her son with new eyes.
This is what it will be like when we all gather around the throne of heaven. We will see each other with eyes of love, and we will fall weeping into each other's arms. And then... God will wipe away every tear from our eyes!
From a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, May 6, 2001.
**********************************************
New Book
The second volume in the vision series, Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences, is available from CSS Publishing Company. For more information about the book visit the CSS website at http://www.csspub.com. You can order any of our books on the CSS website (see the complete list below); they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e--mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1--800--241--4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419--227--1818.)
Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
**************
Picture of Peace
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters...
Psalm 23:2
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all of the pictures, but there were only two he really liked and he had to choose between them.
One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace.
The other picture had mountains too. But these were rugged and bare. Above them was an angry sky from which rain fell, in which lightening played. Down the side of the mountains tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.
But when the King looked carefully, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock.
In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest ---- perfect peace.
Which picture do you think won the prize?
The king chose the second picture. Do you know why?
"Because," explained the King, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace."
Sharing Visions
Charlie's OK
by Bill Hoglund
"They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor nay scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Revelation 8:16--17
Back in the days of my hospital chaplaincy, assigned to what was then a newly opened retirement center connected to the hospital by a tunnel, I felt I always had the best of both worlds in my ministry. When I needed to "decompress" after some tough situation at the hospital, there were always the appreciative seniors at the retirement center, where my "boss," himself a retired clergyman, had carved an office for me out of what was originally intended to be a janitor's storage closet.
Charlie and Doris were an older couple in the building who had come from New Jersey. A native Midwesterner, I always got a kick out of their thick "Jersey" accents. I appreciated them both, but Charlie loved to regale me with golf stories from his career in sales. Many a deal was consummated on the course, and he must have been a pretty fair golfer in his day.
Quite some time later, when I heard things had gone bad for him after a stay in the hospital with pneumonia, I hurried up to the intensive care unit to be with him and his wife. We shared precious moments and prayers before he gently passed on to what he'd once referred to hopefully as his ultimate "promotion."
Later on that cool, crisp night as I got into the '67 Chevy Impala I drove, I noticed the clock of my battered ol' beater had stopped at 8:28. I didn't give it a second thought, since the clock and everything else in the car seemed to have a mind of its own. But the next morning, before her children gathered around her from different parts of the country, I received a phone call from Doris. "Rev. Bill, I know Charlie's OK. I just know it," she said calmly and without tears. "You see, the clock above our kitchen table stopped last night. That clock was a wedding present, and it has traveled all over the country with us. It stopped at exactly the same time the doctor said he ´officially' passed away ---- 8:28 p.m."
You cannot tell me that this was a coincidence, for "Christ has prepared a place for us" (John 3). Doris and I know Charlie's there, peacefully "promoted," maybe "wheeling and dealing" with the saints on some celestial golf course!
Bill Hoglund pastors the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Downers Grove, Illinois (with his clergy spouse, Laura). He has a Certificate of Gerontology and has served as a chaplain and health care administrator. He is engaged in improvisational and sketch comedy in Chicago, and likes to pretend he's a golfer, too. E--mail: revbill@mindspring.com.
Good Stories
Surely Goodness and Mercy
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Psalm 23:6
Timmy was a little five--year--old boy whose mom loved him very much, and being a worrier, she was concerned about him walking to school when he started kindergarten. She walked him to school the first couple of days, and at the end of the week, he came home from school and told his mother that he did not want her walking him to school every day. He wanted to be like the "big boys," he protested loudly.
So she had an idea of how to handle it. She asked a neighbor, Mrs. Goodnest, if she would please follow him to school in the mornings, staying at a distance so he probably wouldn't notice her. Mrs. Goodnest said that since she was up early with her toddler anyway, it would be a good way for them to get some exercise, and she agreed.
The next school day, Mrs. Goodnest and her little girl, Marcy, set out following behind Timmy as he walked to school with another neighbor boy he knew. She did this for the whole week.
As the boys walked and chatted, kicking stones and twigs, Timmy's little friend noticed the same lady was following them, as she seemed to have done every day all week.
Finally he said to Timmy, "Have you noticed that lady following us to school all week? Do you know her?"
Timmy nonchalantly replied, "Yeah, I know who she is."
The friend said, "Well, who is she?"
"That's just Shirley Goodnest," Timmy replied, "and her daughter Marcy."
"Shirley Goodnest? Who the heck is she and why is she following us?"
"Well," Timmy explained, "every night my mom makes me say the 23rd Psalm with my prayers, 'cuz she worries about me so much. And in the psalm, it says, ´Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life,' so I guess I'll just have to get used to it!"
Scrap Pile
The Back Door of Heaven
by John Sumwalt
Revelation 7:9--17
I have been doing pastoral ministry now for almost 30 years. I preached my first sermon as a part-time student lay pastor at First United Methodist Church in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, on June 21, 1971. I was a 20--year--old college kid with hair down to my shoulders, one paisley tie which I wore every Sunday, some gift for public speaking, and not much to say. They were very kind to me there ---- and forgiving.
They almost fired me once because of something stupid I did ---- they should have, but they didn't ---- and I have been employed by the United Methodist Church ever since. It has given me the opportunity to do many more stupid things and to be forgiven again and again, much more than I deserve. Of course that's the thing about forgiveness. If we deserved it, we would never get it.
"It's like St. Peter at the pearly gates, who was busy rejecting the undeserving. Once in a while, however, he would turn around and find that those he had rejected were getting into heaven. He complained to Jesus, ´Look, I'm doing my job, but somehow those people got in anyway,' and Jesus responded, ´Oh, that's my mother. She's letting them in the back door.' " (Christian Century, May 2, 2001, p. 13).
I used to get discouraged in my early years in ministry because I often felt inadequate, and what's worse, I often was. But what I found most difficult was when people got angry with me and with each other, the disagreements and hurt feelings that inevitably occur from time to time in every congregation.
In one congregation there was a man who would never shake my hand after the service. He would make a point of going by me every Sunday. I would put out my hand and he would look away and walk on by. He had disagreed with something I said once in a sermon, and we weren't able to talk about it. He was too stubborn, and I was even more stubborn. I hope to talk to him about it in heaven someday. I expect we will both have a different perspective on the whole thing by then. I'll come back to that in a moment.
There is a word for what I just described; it is an old--fashioned word which we don't like to use much anymore: sin! We don't use it because we think it refers to individual acts ---- and deciding which individual acts are sins and which are not calls for judgment which most of us would rather avoid.
Paul Tillich says, "Sin does not mean an immoral act, that sin should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great all--pervading problem of our life" (The Shaking of the Foundations, p. 154). Tillich says, "Sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of a person from him or herself, and separation of all people from (God)."
Sin is a state; it is a condition that permeates every relationship, personal and international. Estrangement, broken hearts, broken dreams, hurt feelings, murder, destruction, war, chaos; these are the order of the day on most days in most lives on this planet.
That is what is so remarkable about the vision we hear from John's revelation, which is our text today. "After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne... with palm branches in their hands...."
Everybody was there in heaven together, all these nations that had warred against each other, destroyed each other's cities, killed each other, brutally murdered each other's families; they were all there together before the throne, waving palm branches, a symbol of peace. I will come back to that scene in a moment.
It is as the apostle Paul says in Romans 5:20, "where sin abounded [and we know sin does indeed abound] grace did much more abound."
When we were in Montello, we had the privilege of building a new church building with that congregation. It was a community that was growing rapidly, and as more and more young families came into the congregation it was soon apparent that our little building was not going to hold everyone. The problem was that this little congregation had never had very much money and couldn't imagine raising the enormous sum the new building would require. The project almost didn't get off the ground, not because there wasn't enough money, but rather because, as in every other group of human beings, there was plenty of sin.
It turned out there was also plenty of money. We brought in a consultant who helped the church do a capital fund--raising campaign ---- and we developed a congregational loan program in which members made loans to the building fund for whatever the going rate of interest was at that time. It was like buying bonds. And as the project got started and momentum began to build, there were a number of individuals who made substantial contributions. One man paid for the steeple, someone else donated money for the carpeting, and so on.
I learned something then that I have not forgotten. Whenever there is anxiety about money in a church, it is usually not really about money (God provides the money for whatever God calls the church to do). What puts a mission in danger are misunderstandings which lead to harsh words and hurt feelings. Many disagreements in churches are simply matters of misinformation. Misinformation leads to mistrust, mistrust leads to speculation, speculation leads to jumping to conclusions and the pointing of fingers.
Some disagreements in churches are about things that really matter. Someone does something stupid or hurtful ---- or there is a disagreement about some major decision facing the congregation.
I remember one building committee meeting in Montello when we had a disagreement about how to install the stained glass windows from the old building in the new building. Some on the committee wanted to keep the names of the families who had originally donated the windows, and some didn't. The two senior members of the committee, Eleanor Steinhaus (who was a retired funeral director) and Herb Sheller (retired from agribusiness), were on different sides of the issue.
These were two people that I and everyone else in that congregation both loved and greatly admired. Eleanor was the first woman funeral director in the state, and Herb was a very successful muck farmer. He raised carrots and mint and onions in the lowlands, in the muck around Marquette County. These two soft--spoken, gentle giants of the church got down in the muck that night and had it out over stained glass windows. The rest of us at the table kind of ducked down out of the line of fire while they each had their say. The sparks flew for about 45 minutes, and when they were finished the committee voted and the work on the building went forward. Herb and Eleanor remained good friends, and I would guess they are still friends in heaven. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound!
We had about a hundred disagreements like that before that building was completed. There were many times I wanted to quit. I would resign (in my mind) on Sunday evening, and by Tuesday morning, after a day off, I would be back at work.
I have learned slowly, over these thirty years, that nothing of any significance is ever accomplished in the church, in business, in government, in schools, in hospitals, in international relations or anywhere else, unless people are willing to work through disagreements and disappointments, overlook injustices and hurt feelings ---- and forgive one another.
Suzanne Guthrie tells in Christian Century this week that a friend "who served in the military during World War II (and is now a nun) was once at a conference with two men, a German and an American. As they wiped dishes one evening after dinner they exchanged stories about the war. The American told of the horror he felt as a young pilot during a particularly savage bombing of a city in Germany. He had orders to bomb a hospital, which he would know by the huge red cross painted on the roof. The second man ---- after regaining his composure ---- revealed that his wife had been giving birth to their baby in that very hospital when it was being bombed." Guthrie said her friend "tip--toed out of the room as the two men fell into each other's arms weeping." Then, she says, "imagine being in heaven, at the end of the world, where we might fall weeping upon one another, waves of reconciliation breaking upon us as we adjust ourselves to this dimension of pure love" (Christian Century, May 2, 2001, p. 13).
"After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands... the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; ...the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to the springs of the waters of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes" (Revelation 7:9--10, 15--17).
There is a wonderful scene like this in the movie Chocolat, in which an old woman played by Judy Dench (who was nominated for an academy award for this performance) is shown dancing with her grandson. The grandson had been forbidden by his mother to see his grandmother, because she thought her mother was a bad influence on the child. But the child needs his grandmother, and with the help of the owner of the chocolate shop (played by Juliette Binoche) they become friends. On the eve of the grandmother's 70th birthday, the grandson sneaks away to attend her party. His mother comes looking for him and sees him dancing and laughing with his grandmother. As she watches them dance she is transformed. She sees her mother and her son with new eyes.
This is what it will be like when we all gather around the throne of heaven. We will see each other with eyes of love, and we will fall weeping into each other's arms. And then... God will wipe away every tear from our eyes!
From a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, May 6, 2001.
**********************************************
New Book
The second volume in the vision series, Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences, is available from CSS Publishing Company. For more information about the book visit the CSS website at http://www.csspub.com. You can order any of our books on the CSS website (see the complete list below); they are also available from www.amazon.com and at many Christian bookstores. Or simply e--mail your order to orders@csspub.com or phone 1--800--241--4056. (If you live outside the U.S., phone 419--227--1818.)
Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
**************
