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A Story to Live By



Rejoice in My Suffering?



I am now rejoicing in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

Colossians 1:24

Dean Angell, pastor of Lakeview Free Methodist Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, tells of a woman in his congregation who got cancer and suffered greatly, but through her suffering found Jesus -- and he began to change her life:

"Now, I'd like to say Joanne just got better, but she didn't. For five years she suffered much... and every day that she suffered, the power of Christ could be seen more evidently in her life. Literally hundreds of people were touched by God's power through Joanne's life -- as was she. God was so close to her that you could almost see Him and touch Him. It was an honor and privilege and a spiritual experience just being around her. Why? Did God cause the cancer that eventually took her life? No. Why was Joanne sick? I don't know. Why didn't she get healed? I don't know. Why did she suffer so much? I don't know. But this I do know -- physically, Joanne's body was riddled with pain. But I have rarely seen a more spiritually powerful, faith-filled human being than Joanne during those last months. She had found her strength -- and it had nothing to do with health or money or wellness or even happiness. Her strength and power showed up when she was at her weakest point. When the clay pot was clearly broken, Jesus Christ powerfully shone in her life."

From a sermon titled "Suffering, Why Does God Allow It?" May 9, 2002. For the full text of the sermon click on http://lakeviewchurch.com/learning/sermons02/suffering-whydoesgodallowit....

Shining Moments



Being Deceived

by Joy Kilby

You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth. You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue. But God will break you down forever; he will snatch and tear you from your tent; he will uproot you from the land of the living.

Psalm 52:3-5

In the early 1970s, soon after the birth of our son, my husband and I began to argue over even the smallest things. Ours was not the happy-ever-after marriage I had read about in fairy tales. My heart felt empty and longing. We tried marriage counseling with the pastor of our church, and he said one thing that made a lot of sense to me: with God, nothing is impossible. I understood that Jesus and the written word bring truth and life to those who seek, and I began seeking. However, my husband and I were divorced not long after that, and my son and I left the church.

Now I was a single mother, and churchless! I felt totally confused, but not yet broken. Not long after my divorce I began to date a man I met in a bar. A year later we got married. My son was now seven years old. I desperately wanted a father figure for him, since his own father had moved to Texas and had little contact with him.

I started a new life with a new husband. His mother was even religious, and I counted that as a positive. We could talk scripture, and I was happy with that, but as time went on I felt that something was going wrong. I hadn't known that he was an alcoholic, although we met in a bar and I should have taken the clues. I didn't know how sick he was and how under bondage to alcohol. We were married for a total of 16 years. Drinking made him sarcastic, and he began to verbally abuse both my son and me. We had two sons together, and he gave all of his attention to them, just to hurt me, telling them that I was sick and that they didn't have to listen to me.

Five years into the marriage I began to cry out to God, "I don't understand. Please help me!" I didn't understand my life or its direction. Later that year, I went to a rummage sale. When Grandma was alive, she used to say, "it would be Heaven to die at a rummage." Well, as I was standing, looking at some books, I heard a voice behind me. It was a man's voice, gentle and authoritative. I turned around, but there was no one there. The voice seemed to come from within me, yet behind me, and then I realized that it was a spirit talking to me. He said, "you are being deceived." I could hardly stand up. My knees became weak. I gripped the table to keep from falling.

"Oh, my Lord!" I answered. "I've never really known you as Lord!" I was beginning to understand. The darkness was beginning to fade. The Day Star had risen in my heart. I personally committed myself into the Lord's hands, to teach me, step by step. Jesus, Lord, Master, Savior -- all at a rummage sale. Was this a coincidence, or God's perfect timing?

Joy Kilby grew up on a farm in Vinton, Iowa. She works with disabled adults and has a passion for Bible mystery.

Good Stories



Only Good to Be Thrown Away



This is what the Lord God showed me -- a basket of summer fruit. He said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the Lord said to me, "The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by."

Amos 8:1-2

Picture this. You've just come home from the grocery store and you've got yourself a nice little quart of strawberries, and as you're just taking that one that you want to test on the way to the refrigerator, as you're about to pop it in your mouth, you notice that it's starting to get a little black. There's a little bruise on the bottom of it. And so you look to the next layer underneath the shining bright ones and you notice that those are quite bruised on the second level down, and as you pick those up by their little green stems you notice that the ones below them have that green... you know. That's what Amos saw -- only he wasn't looking at the strawberries from the QFC, he was looking at the people of God... and they were only good to be thrown away. It was the end of this people of God. Not the end of a particular king, not the end of a particular practice, but the end of a whole way of life and a sense of integrity.

From a sermon by David Kratz preached at Fauntleroy Church (United Church of Christ) in Seattle, Washington, July 22, 2001. For the full text of the sermon click on http://www.fauntleroyucc.org/Sermons/Sermon%207-22-01.htm.

Always Hungry



The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.

Amos 8:11-12

There is a story from the Sufi tradition which tells of a man who was sitting by the side of a road, sifting through the dust and looking closely at every handful as it poured between his fingers. "What are you doing?" someone asked him. "I am looking for my beloved," he said. "You're not likely to find her there!" came the answer, to which he replied, "I search for her everywhere, likely or not, until I find her."

(David Rensberger, "Thirsty for God," Weavings, July/August 2000, pg. 20)

Scrap Pile



How Many Species Are There?

by John Temple Bristow

And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him -- provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.

Colossians 1:21-23b

After last week, I decided it was time to put Crawford the talking crow in his place in the scheme of things. "You are a crow," I began, "a highly intelligent and adaptable bird." Crawford began to preen his feathers. "You are of the genus Corvus," I continued.

"I don't know who this Corvis fellow was," my feathered friend interrupted, "but if he was a genius, then he must be an ancestor of mine."

Long ago I discovered that Crawford's humility is practically non-existent. "That's genus, not genius," I corrected. "Your type of crow is Corvus brachyrhynchos."

"What's this breaky-rinse-off, anyway?" he asked.

"It's Latin, meaning having a raucous voice. Your kind of crow is referred to in the vernacular as the common crow..." Crawford bristled at this. He hates to be referred to as "common." "...or American crow," I added. Crawford relaxed and began preening himself again.

"There are 45 species of crows and ravens worldwide," I continued in my lecture. "Most of them are..."

"Better than humans!" he snapped.

"Crawford, I know you have this silly notion that crows are superior to people, but..."

He interrupted me again. "I mean that having 45 species, or whatever you call it, makes us better. After all, how many species do you humans have?" When I told Crawford that there is only one, he of course looked very superior and then flew off. But his question intrigued me. We humans really are just one single kind of critter, period.

Too often in the past certain folk (who ought to know better) have declared that certain other folk are not really human. Aristotle used to argue that women are somewhere between men and animals. In America, slaves were excluded from the idea that "all men are created equal." And it was not that long ago when some scientific textbooks still depicted whites as the culmination of evolution, with blacks placed between whites and apes.

A friend once told me that several decades ago laws in California forbade whites marrying orientals. Whenever a person of Mexican origin wanted to marry a Filipino, he said, the Mexican-American would have to produce documents (often false information from family members) "proving" that he or she was a descendant of a native tribe, and therefore was not Hispanic (read "white") and so could legally marry an oriental.

Yet we who are Christians, of all people, should remember that humans are one species, one family, one creation. Period. No exceptions.

After this conversation, I remembered Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 15:39: "Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish." This would have been a great quote to give to this curmudgeon crow, but like most retorts, it came to me several hours after I needed it most.

John Temple Bristow is the pastor of Country Homes Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Spokane, Washington. He has taught in seminaries and colleges, and he is the author of What Paul Really Said about Women (HarperCollins) and What the Bible Really Says about Love, Marriage and Family (Chalice). Bristow is currently working on a manuscript regarding scriptural interpretation and biblical abuse. He may be contacted at johntem@sisna.com, and his web site is http://users.sisna.com/johntem1/

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New Book

The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), will be released this month by CSS Publishing Company. Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Jodie Felton, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music.

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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

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StoryShare, July 18, 2004, issue.

Copyright 2004 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.

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