A Sense Of History
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"A Sense of History" by Keith Hewitt
"Can You Handle A Change in Plans?" by Frank Ramirez
A Sense of History
by Keith Hewitt
Psalm 67
Mark Randall leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands over his stomach, slowly tapped the tips of his thumbs together as he watched Adam Halvorsen pounding out erasers just outside the classroom window. He did it with grim determination, coughing each time the erasers collided and puffed out another cloud of pale yellow chalk dust. Every once in awhile he would pause, and look wistfully toward the athletic field, where baseball practice was well underway.
When he came back inside, Randall said nothing, at first?just watched as Adam placed the erasers back, more-or-less where they had been on the tray beneath the green chalkboards that lined the side wall of the classroom. When he was nearly finished, Randall said quietly, “Do you know why I teach history, Adam?”
Young Halvorsen looked surprised, as though he’d never considered such a question?one might as well ask why the sky is blue, or the lake wet. The expression faded after a moment, though, replaced by something a little less expressive as he shrugged. “Because you like torturing kids, and this is the only way you can do it legally?”
Randall didn’t take the bait, just smiled. “No, that’s just a side benefit. I teach history because I want you to know how good you have it.”
Adam almost sneered. “Yeah, we’ve got it great. World War Three hanging over our heads, inflation, all that crap happening over in the Middle East?“ Hesitated, shrugged again and said, “Sorry. Stuff.”
“No, crap is a pretty good word for it. I’ll give you that one. But sit down a minute.”
“You said I could go to practice after I finished cleaning the boards.”
“I said you could go to practice when you were done. You’re not done. Sit down.” He nodded toward one of the desks. Adam rolled his eyes, and sat, folding his arms over his chest and slouching until his knees hit the front legs of the desk. Randall sighed, and picked up a pen in his left hand, slowly clicked it several times, pushing out the point, then retracting it. When he sensed that Adam was about to say something, he said, “So, you’ve got it pretty bad, right?”
The young man shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“What’s your future look like?”
“You mean, assuming we’re not all part of a mushroom cloud, some day? I guess college. Then work. Work until I’m old, and then I retire and live on Social Security, or whatever.”
“What do you want to be? What are you going to go to college for?”
“Engineer, I guess. Or an architect.”
“For most of human history, you know that choice would already have been made for you already: you’d be a hunter. That would be your job, and you’d already be doing it--spending your day figuring out how to track and kill game. And for you, a bad day at work would mean you don’t get to eat that day. And neither would your family. Because by now you’d have a wife, and probably a child. Maybe two, if one of them hadn’t died, yet.
“Then things got better, and we learned to farm?so if you were lucky enough to be born later in history, you would have been a farmer. Working and sweating every day to tend your fields. Praying for good weather, because if you didn’t have it, and the crop failed?well, you died. And so did your family. And for most of the rest of human history, that would have been your life. It’s not until the last thousand years or so that you might have had the luxury of making a choice about what you were going to do. Actually only the last couple of centuries that the choice really meant anything for more than a small percentage of the population.”
Adam scowled. “Life is about more than your job.”
“Not if your job is the only thing keeping you alive. But let’s say you’re right?it is about more. It’s about family?and it’s only in pretty recent times that you could count on all of your children growing up, and on your wife surviving childbirth every time she had a baby. It’s about your health?and it’s only in recent times that medicine has reached the point where an infection doesn’t put you on a death watch, and things like cancer can be treated well enough to give you a chance at surviving. It’s about human dignity and freedom?and it’s only in the last few centuries that we’ve figured out how to give those to more people than ever before.” Randall spread his hands. “Things aren’t perfect, but they’re better than they’ve ever been. That’s the difference between nostalgia and history?nostalgia only remembers the good things, history remembers everything.”
“OK, I’ve got it great. I’ll send a thank you note to the universe. Am I done?”
“Adam, we’re here on a planet that’s got everything we need to keep us alive. Comfortably alive. This planet happens to be in just the right spot to make life possible. And we’re living in a time where we get to enjoy the fruits of many, many generations’ labors. You don’t remember a time when we hadn’t landed on the Moon, do you?”
Adam shrugged. “Not really.”
“I do. And I remember my grandfather being so excited, because he was born before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. He remembered hearing about the first airplane?and he lived long enough to see the first spaceship land on the Moon. All in the space of a single human lifetime. And I’m betting technology is only going to improve faster. You can buy a computer to have in your house, now.”
Another eyeroll. “Yeah, like that’s ever going to mean anything. Rich people’s toys. I’ve got about as much use for a computer in my house as I do for an electron microscope.“
Randall shrugged, this time. “Who knows? But the point is, life is pretty darn good, all things considered. We’re healthier than we’ve ever been, with more freedom and choices than we’ve ever had. The bad stuff is stuff we do to ourselves, and that means we can figure out how to not do it?if we want to.”
He hesitated, then said, “Look, I want to say this like my Dad does?God’s given us everything we need to make us happy?more than we need. If we can’t figure out how to do that, then that’s on us. We need to be thankful?not greedy.” He glanced at the clock, rocked forward in his chair. “You’re done. You can still make about half your practice.”
Adam stood up without a word, headed for the door?and at the door, he turned. “How do we do that? How can we be happy?”
Randall smiled. “Be thankful for what you’ve got?that’s a gift from the past, for the present. But the happy part?that’s a future you have to figure out.”
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). Keith's newest book NaTiVity Dramas: The Third Season will be published September 2012. He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
* * *
Can You Handle A Change in Plans?
by Frank Ramirez
During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them (Acts 16:9-10).
On July 26, 1971 Apollo 15 was launched towards the moon. David Scott, the mission's commander, and Lunar Module pilot James Irwin not only landed safely (while Command Module Pilot Al Worden conducted scientific experiments from lunar orbit), they were the first to utilize the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), traveling over seventeen miles in the ungainly looking contraption. By the time they returned to earth on August 7, with one hundred and seventy pounds of moon rocks stowed away for further study, NASA was calling theirs its most successful mission into space to that date.
But it was a little demonstration by Commander Scott near the end of the third and final moonwalk that not only attracted a great deal of attention at the time, but continues to be watched decades later, on YouTube and other websites, by students in science classrooms as well as by folks who enjoy something a little quirky.
You see, one of the laws of science that governs motion, gravity, and spaceships is called equivalency. According to equivalency -- and also, according to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) -- the mass of an object doesn't affect the pull of gravity. Everything, no matter how heavy or light it is, ought to fall at the same speed. Both Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein drew upon this observation by Galileo in working out their own mathematical models of the universe.
Galileo is said (and no one is really sure if this really happened!) is said to have "proved" Equivalence by dropping two metal balls of different sizes and weights from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They seemed to have landed at the same moment despite the fact one was much heavier than the other. (To be fair, others say he rolled those two balls down a hill).
He is also supposed to have said that in the absence of an atmosphere a cannon ball and a feather would also drop at the same rate. The problem was that atmosphere. Because with that atmosphere even with the use of two heavy metal balls the experiment could only be accurate to around one percent. A spot was needed with no atmosphere but enough gravity for things to fall down when dropped to provide proof.
In the Space Age equivalency is an essential element when it came to plotting the course of spacecraft of whatever size along whatever trajectory they were hurled, including, for instance, plotting a course from the earth to the moon.
And this led to Scott's demonstration. He sent out to prove Galileo was right. Scott had carried a falcon's feather to the moon, hidden in a pocket of his space suit. That particular bird was chosen because of the nickname assigned to the Lunar Module -- the Falcon. Pulling forth the feather with one hand and taking up one of the geology hammers used by the astronauts to excavate moon rocks with the other, Scott reminded his world-wide audience of Galileo's assertion. He then dropped both feather and hammer at the same moment. They plummeted to the lunar surface and seemed to land simultaneously.
In today's scripture the apostle Paul and his companions demonstrated an equivalency of sorts when they turned aside from their plans and changed course, responding to a vision which indicated God's desire for them to head to Philippi instead. Great good was done by Paul and his companions when they preached the gospel in a place they’d planned to visit, or with weightier effort changed plans, demonstrating perhaps something like a gospel equivalency in mission and ministry. The same great gospel was preached regardless.
Sometimes we are called to shift the same energy we use in tried and true ministries that we have supported in the past. We can expend those energies in new visions and new missions when we are called by the Spirit to change course. No matter what weight we assign to God’s ministries, we’ll land in the same place -- God’s Kingdom!
What stops us from setting a new course when it comes to missions and ministry? For that we ought to turn to another great mathematician/scientist -- Isaac Newton. The first of his Three Laws of Motion is called the Law of Inertia. It states simply that an object at rest tends to remain at rest, while an object in motion will tend to remain in motion!
We can apply this to churches as well. Churches in motion tend to stay in motion but -- and here is where the church comes in -- churches at rest tend to stay at rest. Is yours a church in motion? Congratulations. But churches and believers tend to want to stay at rest. We may think we like innovation, but most of us don't want things to change, even though, wherever God may lead us, we will land in the same spot -- God’s kingdom..
(Want to watch David Scott drop a feather and a hammer on the lunar surface. Use your search engine -- it’s all over the Internet).
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 1, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
"A Sense of History" by Keith Hewitt
"Can You Handle A Change in Plans?" by Frank Ramirez
A Sense of History
by Keith Hewitt
Psalm 67
Mark Randall leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands over his stomach, slowly tapped the tips of his thumbs together as he watched Adam Halvorsen pounding out erasers just outside the classroom window. He did it with grim determination, coughing each time the erasers collided and puffed out another cloud of pale yellow chalk dust. Every once in awhile he would pause, and look wistfully toward the athletic field, where baseball practice was well underway.
When he came back inside, Randall said nothing, at first?just watched as Adam placed the erasers back, more-or-less where they had been on the tray beneath the green chalkboards that lined the side wall of the classroom. When he was nearly finished, Randall said quietly, “Do you know why I teach history, Adam?”
Young Halvorsen looked surprised, as though he’d never considered such a question?one might as well ask why the sky is blue, or the lake wet. The expression faded after a moment, though, replaced by something a little less expressive as he shrugged. “Because you like torturing kids, and this is the only way you can do it legally?”
Randall didn’t take the bait, just smiled. “No, that’s just a side benefit. I teach history because I want you to know how good you have it.”
Adam almost sneered. “Yeah, we’ve got it great. World War Three hanging over our heads, inflation, all that crap happening over in the Middle East?“ Hesitated, shrugged again and said, “Sorry. Stuff.”
“No, crap is a pretty good word for it. I’ll give you that one. But sit down a minute.”
“You said I could go to practice after I finished cleaning the boards.”
“I said you could go to practice when you were done. You’re not done. Sit down.” He nodded toward one of the desks. Adam rolled his eyes, and sat, folding his arms over his chest and slouching until his knees hit the front legs of the desk. Randall sighed, and picked up a pen in his left hand, slowly clicked it several times, pushing out the point, then retracting it. When he sensed that Adam was about to say something, he said, “So, you’ve got it pretty bad, right?”
The young man shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“What’s your future look like?”
“You mean, assuming we’re not all part of a mushroom cloud, some day? I guess college. Then work. Work until I’m old, and then I retire and live on Social Security, or whatever.”
“What do you want to be? What are you going to go to college for?”
“Engineer, I guess. Or an architect.”
“For most of human history, you know that choice would already have been made for you already: you’d be a hunter. That would be your job, and you’d already be doing it--spending your day figuring out how to track and kill game. And for you, a bad day at work would mean you don’t get to eat that day. And neither would your family. Because by now you’d have a wife, and probably a child. Maybe two, if one of them hadn’t died, yet.
“Then things got better, and we learned to farm?so if you were lucky enough to be born later in history, you would have been a farmer. Working and sweating every day to tend your fields. Praying for good weather, because if you didn’t have it, and the crop failed?well, you died. And so did your family. And for most of the rest of human history, that would have been your life. It’s not until the last thousand years or so that you might have had the luxury of making a choice about what you were going to do. Actually only the last couple of centuries that the choice really meant anything for more than a small percentage of the population.”
Adam scowled. “Life is about more than your job.”
“Not if your job is the only thing keeping you alive. But let’s say you’re right?it is about more. It’s about family?and it’s only in pretty recent times that you could count on all of your children growing up, and on your wife surviving childbirth every time she had a baby. It’s about your health?and it’s only in recent times that medicine has reached the point where an infection doesn’t put you on a death watch, and things like cancer can be treated well enough to give you a chance at surviving. It’s about human dignity and freedom?and it’s only in the last few centuries that we’ve figured out how to give those to more people than ever before.” Randall spread his hands. “Things aren’t perfect, but they’re better than they’ve ever been. That’s the difference between nostalgia and history?nostalgia only remembers the good things, history remembers everything.”
“OK, I’ve got it great. I’ll send a thank you note to the universe. Am I done?”
“Adam, we’re here on a planet that’s got everything we need to keep us alive. Comfortably alive. This planet happens to be in just the right spot to make life possible. And we’re living in a time where we get to enjoy the fruits of many, many generations’ labors. You don’t remember a time when we hadn’t landed on the Moon, do you?”
Adam shrugged. “Not really.”
“I do. And I remember my grandfather being so excited, because he was born before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. He remembered hearing about the first airplane?and he lived long enough to see the first spaceship land on the Moon. All in the space of a single human lifetime. And I’m betting technology is only going to improve faster. You can buy a computer to have in your house, now.”
Another eyeroll. “Yeah, like that’s ever going to mean anything. Rich people’s toys. I’ve got about as much use for a computer in my house as I do for an electron microscope.“
Randall shrugged, this time. “Who knows? But the point is, life is pretty darn good, all things considered. We’re healthier than we’ve ever been, with more freedom and choices than we’ve ever had. The bad stuff is stuff we do to ourselves, and that means we can figure out how to not do it?if we want to.”
He hesitated, then said, “Look, I want to say this like my Dad does?God’s given us everything we need to make us happy?more than we need. If we can’t figure out how to do that, then that’s on us. We need to be thankful?not greedy.” He glanced at the clock, rocked forward in his chair. “You’re done. You can still make about half your practice.”
Adam stood up without a word, headed for the door?and at the door, he turned. “How do we do that? How can we be happy?”
Randall smiled. “Be thankful for what you’ve got?that’s a gift from the past, for the present. But the happy part?that’s a future you have to figure out.”
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). Keith's newest book NaTiVity Dramas: The Third Season will be published September 2012. He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
* * *
Can You Handle A Change in Plans?
by Frank Ramirez
During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us." When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them (Acts 16:9-10).
On July 26, 1971 Apollo 15 was launched towards the moon. David Scott, the mission's commander, and Lunar Module pilot James Irwin not only landed safely (while Command Module Pilot Al Worden conducted scientific experiments from lunar orbit), they were the first to utilize the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), traveling over seventeen miles in the ungainly looking contraption. By the time they returned to earth on August 7, with one hundred and seventy pounds of moon rocks stowed away for further study, NASA was calling theirs its most successful mission into space to that date.
But it was a little demonstration by Commander Scott near the end of the third and final moonwalk that not only attracted a great deal of attention at the time, but continues to be watched decades later, on YouTube and other websites, by students in science classrooms as well as by folks who enjoy something a little quirky.
You see, one of the laws of science that governs motion, gravity, and spaceships is called equivalency. According to equivalency -- and also, according to Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) -- the mass of an object doesn't affect the pull of gravity. Everything, no matter how heavy or light it is, ought to fall at the same speed. Both Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein drew upon this observation by Galileo in working out their own mathematical models of the universe.
Galileo is said (and no one is really sure if this really happened!) is said to have "proved" Equivalence by dropping two metal balls of different sizes and weights from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They seemed to have landed at the same moment despite the fact one was much heavier than the other. (To be fair, others say he rolled those two balls down a hill).
He is also supposed to have said that in the absence of an atmosphere a cannon ball and a feather would also drop at the same rate. The problem was that atmosphere. Because with that atmosphere even with the use of two heavy metal balls the experiment could only be accurate to around one percent. A spot was needed with no atmosphere but enough gravity for things to fall down when dropped to provide proof.
In the Space Age equivalency is an essential element when it came to plotting the course of spacecraft of whatever size along whatever trajectory they were hurled, including, for instance, plotting a course from the earth to the moon.
And this led to Scott's demonstration. He sent out to prove Galileo was right. Scott had carried a falcon's feather to the moon, hidden in a pocket of his space suit. That particular bird was chosen because of the nickname assigned to the Lunar Module -- the Falcon. Pulling forth the feather with one hand and taking up one of the geology hammers used by the astronauts to excavate moon rocks with the other, Scott reminded his world-wide audience of Galileo's assertion. He then dropped both feather and hammer at the same moment. They plummeted to the lunar surface and seemed to land simultaneously.
In today's scripture the apostle Paul and his companions demonstrated an equivalency of sorts when they turned aside from their plans and changed course, responding to a vision which indicated God's desire for them to head to Philippi instead. Great good was done by Paul and his companions when they preached the gospel in a place they’d planned to visit, or with weightier effort changed plans, demonstrating perhaps something like a gospel equivalency in mission and ministry. The same great gospel was preached regardless.
Sometimes we are called to shift the same energy we use in tried and true ministries that we have supported in the past. We can expend those energies in new visions and new missions when we are called by the Spirit to change course. No matter what weight we assign to God’s ministries, we’ll land in the same place -- God’s Kingdom!
What stops us from setting a new course when it comes to missions and ministry? For that we ought to turn to another great mathematician/scientist -- Isaac Newton. The first of his Three Laws of Motion is called the Law of Inertia. It states simply that an object at rest tends to remain at rest, while an object in motion will tend to remain in motion!
We can apply this to churches as well. Churches in motion tend to stay in motion but -- and here is where the church comes in -- churches at rest tend to stay at rest. Is yours a church in motion? Congratulations. But churches and believers tend to want to stay at rest. We may think we like innovation, but most of us don't want things to change, even though, wherever God may lead us, we will land in the same spot -- God’s kingdom..
(Want to watch David Scott drop a feather and a hammer on the lunar surface. Use your search engine -- it’s all over the Internet).
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, May 1, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 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.
