Star Of Bethlehem
Stories
Object:
A Story to Live By
Star of Bethlehem
by David E. Cobb
...they set out and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.
Matthew 2:9b
"Daddy, I saw the star of Bethlehem!" That's how I woke up on the Thursday after Epiphany. My four-and-a-half-year-old son, Jackson, was standing next to my pillow announcing excitedly that he had seen the star of Bethlehem in the east. He was really jazzed. Katy and I quickly got out of bed and went straight to his bedroom window. The sun had not yet risen. We looked up through the tree branches into the sky, and sure enough, there in the east was a bright light, larger than any star or planet I'd ever seen, not moving or flashing like an airplane, but enormous. "Let's go outside," I said. I grabbed the binoculars from the closet, and Jackson and I stepped out into the chilly pre-dawn air. It was still there. Katy followed. The three of us took turns looking through the binoculars, amazed at the size and brilliance of it. I wished I had a telescope.
We haven't told him yet that it was probably Jupiter. At least that's what the newspaper said we'd find in the pre-dawn eastern sky. For Jackson, just a few days after Epiphany and the visitation of the magi, he knew what it was. Standing there in his pajamas and slippers, he said, "Let's follow it so we can find Jesus."
I think I said something like, "That was a long time ago, and Bethlehem is very far away. Maybe this star is telling us to look for Jesus here where we live."
He looked up at me and said, "That's okay, Daddy. I'll find him."
Perhaps he already has.
David E. Cobb is Senior Minister at Community Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Richardson Texas. This story appears in Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences, edited by John Sumwalt and published by CSS Publishing Company of Lima, Ohio (2003).
Shining Moments
He Will Wipe Away Every Tear
by Rosmarie Trapp
...I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
Jeremiah 31:13b
In 1987, I came to Stowe, Vermont, for a visit with my mother, Maria von Trapp. Her maid met us at the door with the news that mother was very ill and the ambulance was coming to take her to the hospital. Her friend Emily Johnson and I followed, and I had to sign a permission form for an exploratory surgery, as no other members of the family were available. My family was scattered in Europe, Arizona, Maryland, and elsewhere.
It was my mother's custom to bless us with a cross on the forehead. After a kiss, that was the last thing she did for me, as she never came out of the anesthesia. Her body was too deteriorated for them to operate. She was in a coma for three days.
The family gathered, friends came, we had mass said in the ICU bedroom with her, and we sang lots of our family songs for her. At her actual passing, only my younger sister Lorli and my niece Elisabeth were there. My older brother Werner, his wife, Fr. Paul Taggart, and I were having dinner at the Trapp Lodge. Tina, the harpist, was playing "In the Garden," a favorite of my mother's, when the message came of her passing. It made Werner cry, for he felt it was a sign from mother that she was in the garden of Paradise. My request to God was that she would see somebody from heaven come to meet her, and she did, for we were told she opened her eyes and sat up in joyful greeting just before she died. It makes me cry just to write this, but oh, the comfort!
Many years later, our pastor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Eddie Donovan, told me of a dream he had: He was walking through paradise and came on my mother, Maria, and her friend Emily, sitting on a bench reading poetry. He asked if he could sit with them, but they told him the grass would do, as the bench was small. So he sat at their feet and listened. What a dream, again, so comforting! Three signs for me to be sure she was there, and someday I'll be there, too, God willing. And we'll get along better than we ever did on earth!
Rosmarie Trapp is the daughter of Captain Georg and Maria von Trapp, whose story was told in the movie The Sound of Music. Rosmarie was the first of three children born to the von Trapps following their marriage. (The widowed captain already had seven children when Maria came to be the family governess.) Rosmarie and her nine brothers and sisters made up the von Trapp Family Singers, who became famous after their triumphant flight from Nazi-controlled Austria in the 1930s. Rosmarie is a member of the "Community of the Crucified One" in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and she lives in an apartment in one of their mission houses in Vermont, where she is involved in children's Bible classes, fundraisers, and prison ministry, sharing the message "Jesus loves you."
Good Stories
Granna
by John Sumwalt
"He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock." For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him. They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil....
Jeremiah 31:10b-12a
"I was born in a refugee camp, near the end of the last great war. We lived there until I was almost eight years old. I remember because we got word that we were going home on the eve of my eighth birthday. Oh, what a time it was."
The teenage boy smiled and moved his chair closer to the old woman's bed. He had heard the story a hundred times before, but he was glad to hear it again: glad that his grandmother was able to say anything at all. Sometimes she went for days at a time without saying a word, not recognizing anyone on the nursing home staff or any of the several family members who came often to see her. But the sound of her grandson's voice always seemed to bring her back. She would touch his face and say, "Jimmy, it's you." And then they would talk, as they always had since he was a small boy.
"Tell me about Granna," he said. It was his favorite part of the long saga of her life in the refugee camp. And so the old woman would tell the tale again.
"We were always hungry," she said. "Sometimes the fighting was so fierce around the camp that several weeks would pass before the relief trucks came with our rations. Father and Mother would make what food we had last as long as they could, eating very little themselves so that we children would have enough to keep us alive. There were many occasions when we were so weak from hunger that we had no strength to chase each other on the muddy paths between the tents, as we did when our bellies were full. It was then that she would gather all of us around her up on the hill, on the dry rocks overlooking the camp. 'It is story time,' she would say as she began to hobble up the path, pulling herself along with a cut-off section of metal pipe that she used as a cane. The word spread fast, and soon there would be more than 100 hungry children gathered around her on the rocks. There was always at least one little one on her lap, cuddled in close to the old, frayed army blanket that she wore over her shoulders like a shawl. Her name was Rachel, but she was known throughout the camp as Granna. It was the name one of the little ones had given to her -- his way of saying grandma. And so that's what we called her, for she was grandmother to us all.
"She always began by telling us how our people were once slaves in Egypt, how their cruel captors forced them to make bricks in the hot sun, and how God sent Moses to set them free and lead them through the wilderness to the promised land. She told of the day God sent quails into their camp when they were hungry, and after that gave them manna to gather from the ground each morning. She made the story sound so real, and we were so hungry that we could almost taste the tender manna. We used to look for manna on the ground around our tents, but we never found anything that was edible. The sand and pebbles that we did gather were mixed into a mud cake batter and baked on hot rocks by the fire. When the cakes were done, we covered them with imaginary honey and jam and pretended to eat them.
"Our favorite story of all those Granna told us from the 'Big Book,' as she called it, was the tale of Elijah, the Tishbite, and the Ravens. 'Elijah was a mighty prophet,' she would say, and then in a deep, dramatic voice she would recount the words he spoke to the wicked king who was oppressing his people. 'As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.' And then, she said, the rain stopped and there was no longer any morning dew. The King became so angry with Elijah that he had to flee for his life. God told him to go and hide beside a small stream in the desert. So the prophet went and lived by the stream, and great black birds called ravens brought him bread and meat twice a day, in the morning and in the evening.
"When the hunger pangs in our swollen stomachs were the worst, we used to scan the skies looking for ravens. Who knew, maybe God would send us bread and meat too.
"And then on one of those awful, hungry days that I shall never forget, we heard the sound of engines overhead and felt the force of a great wind on our faces. There were three large cargo helicopters hovering over the camp. Soon we saw parachutes open above our heads and begin to float gently to the earth carrying big cartons of food and supplies. We ran to the spot where they fell, hundreds of us, pushing and shoving, grabbing for anything we could find to eat. Lucky for us, one of the first boxes that broke open contained fresh apples. We gobbled down the apples, and we danced and sang around the camp in anticipation of the feast that we knew was to come as soon as the rations had been divided.
"After we had eaten, Granna gathered us all together again on the rocks above the camp, and this time instead of telling us a story, she taught us how to say thanks to the One who had sent us food to eat.
"Granna's stories saved our lives," the old woman sighed. "Oh, what a time it was."
One day when the boy came to the nursing home to see her, the old woman would not respond. He sat with her quietly for a while, holding onto one of her tired hands. And then he tried again. "Granna," he said, "are you there?" Slowly there appeared in her eyes a glimmer of recognition. "Jimmy," she said, "it's you."
This story is dedicated to my favorite mother-in-law, Phyllis Hunter Perry, who is known to her grandchildren as Granna.
Scrap Pile
Which Side of the Light?
by Paul Larsen
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1:5
Our members who have gone on the Appalachian Service Project trip can probably picture this setting better than most. Becky lived in the Virginia mountains in a poor, rundown home. The folks who lived in the mountains near her called her Becky Lou. City folks called her a hillbilly. Becky grew up in the lush beauty of those mountains without ever seeing them. She was blind. She could sing and play the dulcimer and the guitar. She sang there in the hollows, her voice bouncing and floating downhill all the way to the little stone Lutheran church in the valley. But she had no light -- no direction. Where does a blind hillbilly girl find a life? But one day, setting out from the Lutheran church, Sister Sophie came slowly up the hill. She was a deaconess, a sort of Lutheran nun -- few are left in the church. Sophie was one of the last. She came and sat on Becky's front porch and listened to her sing the songs of the mountains. When she had finished, Sophie said, "Becky, I want to take you to a doctor -- a special doctor who can do amazing operations on eyes. Perhaps he can help you."
The Lutheran church paid the bill for two tickets to Washington, D.C., all the operations Becky needed, and even a new cardboard suitcase. Becky tells how the doctors came into her room one night, removed the protective coverings, and for the very first time in her life, Becky saw light. She said: "It was the most beautiful thing I had ever imagined because with it came color and brightness, form and shine. But most of all," says Becky, "I knew my way -- I could see the worn path on the floor from my hospital bed to the door. I had a way." So days later Becky left the hospital with Sister Sophie, and she knew she had a way because she had light. Light was all she needed to help her build a life.
It was almost the opposite story for a boy named Bryan. Bryan had the light. He could see things better than most. His eyes were opening into a brilliant mind. He loved experimenting, and even as a little kid he came up with the most creative concoctions with his toy chemistry set. He still enjoyed experimenting in college. It was in the '60s when the Weathermen and the SDS were bombing buildings everywhere. Bryan read about it and, while he wasn't a reactionary or a rebel, he wanted to see if he could make a chemical explosive. Something went wrong and it exploded as he was working on it. The blast blew him out of the room and away from the resulting fire, but the sudden flash of chemicals was so bright that Bryan was blinded by the light.
Light is a strange thing -- it can both give sight and cause blindness. It can both hide and reveal. It all depends on your perspective.
Several years ago my little nephew got a flashlight as one of his Christmas gifts, and he loved it. He really thought it was neat to turn off the lights and lead us around in the dark. The light helps us see the way. But one of his favorite tricks was to shine the light in our eyes, and then we couldn't see a thing.
Light can do both things -- it can help us to see or it can keep us from seeing. It depends on which side of the light we are on. Jesus is described as the light of the world in our Gospel text, and as the light of the world he gives sight and helps us to see God. Some, however, are blinded by his light.
The scribes and Pharisees could not see God in or through Jesus. They were blind to the good in him and only saw a threat to organized religion and the status quo. While Jesus was the light of the world and came to reveal God to all who stand in darkness, that light blinded the religious leaders of the day. It is awfully easy for us to get smug and condemn the scribes and Pharisees and wonder why they were so blind that they couldn't see.
But I don't think that we should be too sure we would have done any differently. If some wild-eyed fanatic wandered in here with his dirty dozen and claimed to be God's Son, we wouldn't clamor to follow him -- we would probably commit him. Look at who Jesus surrounded himself with: unemployed fishermen; tax collectors who had just walked away from their tables; zealots anxious for the revolution. And if that wasn't enough, there were those women with less than respectable reputations.
I'm not sure we would see God in that lot, or even in their leader. Faith comes easier for us than for the scribes and Pharisees because we live after the fact. The people of Jesus' day had to judge by appearances. In many ways we suffer from the same kind of blindness to the light of Christ. Matthew, chapter 25, contains a parable about the last judgment where the righteous people are rewarded for caring for the hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, and sick of the world. On the other hand, the unrighteous are condemned for not caring in those same ways. Neither the righteous nor the unrighteous thought they had ever seen Christ, but Jesus, the judge, says caring for the least important person is just like caring for Him.
1 John 4:20 says: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brother or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." If we fail to see Jesus in the people around us then we are just as blind as the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day. We are standing on the wrong side of the light, and instead of it lighting our way and enabling us to see God, we are blinded by it and we live in the darkness of sin.
There are lots of things that can put us on the wrong side of the light -- selfishness, anger, worry, jealousy, pride -- any number of things. If we let those things control our lives, then we are blinded by Christ, the light, instead of illumined. We live in darkness instead of the brightness Christ offers. We live a life that is lost and filled with fear instead of a life following the guidance of Christ's light.
In the book Giants in the Earth, Per and Bridget have come from Norway to settle in the new land. They make the long journey from Ellis Island, near New York City, to the Dakota Territory. On the way they lose almost everything they have brought from Norway, except for Bridget's Norwegian trunk full of cookware and kitchen necessities. When they reach Dakota, Bridget sees the wide expanse of land lying before her and she feels a terrible dread. Many Norwegians, especially those from fjord country, experienced this fear of open spaces. In Norway they could see to the top of the hill. In the Dakotas there were no hills, no trees, not even a bump in the land, and you could see for miles.
One day Per comes in from the fields and Bridget is not around the house or the yard. He searches everywhere and finally finds her curled up in a tight ball inside the trunk. She will not come out. Per, in typical Norwegian fashion, closes the lid and sits by the trunk for days, waiting for Bridget to become desperately sick of the darkness. Finally, after nearly a week it happens. Per awakens with the sun and finds her standing by the window looking out on miles and miles of flat prairie land. She says, "This land frightens me, Per, but it's where we are and we'll have to find some way to live with it." Then, stoically, she sets out searching for a way in the light. She knows she can't find the way if she is curled up in the darkness.
We are often as frightened of the path of service as Bridget was of the prairie. We are comfortable with the close confines of our own existence. Most of the time we can see our way through our own problems and worries, but to take on the troubles of others is more than we can bear. We would rather be blind to them. We stop watching the news because it is all bad:
* It talks about hungry and naked and thirsty people.
* It talks about suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
* It talks about starvation in Africa.
* It talks about trouble in the world.
* It talks about those living in the darkness of life, and we can't see how to share our light.
But that is what we have been called to do -- to share the light of Christ's love:
* We need to let the light of Christ pierce the darkness of our lives so we can see.
* We need to let Him brighten the night of our worry with his promise of peace.
* We need to let the beacon of his love lead us away from our selfishness and onto the path of service.
* We need to let him enlighten us and help us to see others as he created them to be, rather than peering at them with the black eyes of anger or hostility or jealousy.
Christ is the light of the world and wants to illumine our lives and show us the ways in which we can serve him and his people. Becky received the gift of light and used it to see her way in life. Bryan was blinded by the light and will never see again. The disciples saw in Christ the light of the world. He revealed God to them, and they followed that light throughout their lives. The scribes and Pharisees were blind to who Jesus was and plotted and planned to extinguish his life.
How do we react to the light of Christ's love and grace? Which side of it are we on? Does the light show us our way or are we blinded by it? Jesus, the light of the world, bids us to see and to follow and to serve so that others might be enlightened by his love. Amen.
Let us pray: O God, we give you thanks for the light of Christ. Help us to see. Give us the guidance we need, not only to see our way through our own problems, but also to see how we might brighten the lives of others. Amen.
Paul Larsen is Senior Pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church, 1900 7th St. NW, New Brighton, Minnesota 55117.
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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.) Click on any title for more information.
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
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StoryShare, January 4, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2003 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., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
Star of Bethlehem
by David E. Cobb
...they set out and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.
Matthew 2:9b
"Daddy, I saw the star of Bethlehem!" That's how I woke up on the Thursday after Epiphany. My four-and-a-half-year-old son, Jackson, was standing next to my pillow announcing excitedly that he had seen the star of Bethlehem in the east. He was really jazzed. Katy and I quickly got out of bed and went straight to his bedroom window. The sun had not yet risen. We looked up through the tree branches into the sky, and sure enough, there in the east was a bright light, larger than any star or planet I'd ever seen, not moving or flashing like an airplane, but enormous. "Let's go outside," I said. I grabbed the binoculars from the closet, and Jackson and I stepped out into the chilly pre-dawn air. It was still there. Katy followed. The three of us took turns looking through the binoculars, amazed at the size and brilliance of it. I wished I had a telescope.
We haven't told him yet that it was probably Jupiter. At least that's what the newspaper said we'd find in the pre-dawn eastern sky. For Jackson, just a few days after Epiphany and the visitation of the magi, he knew what it was. Standing there in his pajamas and slippers, he said, "Let's follow it so we can find Jesus."
I think I said something like, "That was a long time ago, and Bethlehem is very far away. Maybe this star is telling us to look for Jesus here where we live."
He looked up at me and said, "That's okay, Daddy. I'll find him."
Perhaps he already has.
David E. Cobb is Senior Minister at Community Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Richardson Texas. This story appears in Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences, edited by John Sumwalt and published by CSS Publishing Company of Lima, Ohio (2003).
Shining Moments
He Will Wipe Away Every Tear
by Rosmarie Trapp
...I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
Jeremiah 31:13b
In 1987, I came to Stowe, Vermont, for a visit with my mother, Maria von Trapp. Her maid met us at the door with the news that mother was very ill and the ambulance was coming to take her to the hospital. Her friend Emily Johnson and I followed, and I had to sign a permission form for an exploratory surgery, as no other members of the family were available. My family was scattered in Europe, Arizona, Maryland, and elsewhere.
It was my mother's custom to bless us with a cross on the forehead. After a kiss, that was the last thing she did for me, as she never came out of the anesthesia. Her body was too deteriorated for them to operate. She was in a coma for three days.
The family gathered, friends came, we had mass said in the ICU bedroom with her, and we sang lots of our family songs for her. At her actual passing, only my younger sister Lorli and my niece Elisabeth were there. My older brother Werner, his wife, Fr. Paul Taggart, and I were having dinner at the Trapp Lodge. Tina, the harpist, was playing "In the Garden," a favorite of my mother's, when the message came of her passing. It made Werner cry, for he felt it was a sign from mother that she was in the garden of Paradise. My request to God was that she would see somebody from heaven come to meet her, and she did, for we were told she opened her eyes and sat up in joyful greeting just before she died. It makes me cry just to write this, but oh, the comfort!
Many years later, our pastor in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Eddie Donovan, told me of a dream he had: He was walking through paradise and came on my mother, Maria, and her friend Emily, sitting on a bench reading poetry. He asked if he could sit with them, but they told him the grass would do, as the bench was small. So he sat at their feet and listened. What a dream, again, so comforting! Three signs for me to be sure she was there, and someday I'll be there, too, God willing. And we'll get along better than we ever did on earth!
Rosmarie Trapp is the daughter of Captain Georg and Maria von Trapp, whose story was told in the movie The Sound of Music. Rosmarie was the first of three children born to the von Trapps following their marriage. (The widowed captain already had seven children when Maria came to be the family governess.) Rosmarie and her nine brothers and sisters made up the von Trapp Family Singers, who became famous after their triumphant flight from Nazi-controlled Austria in the 1930s. Rosmarie is a member of the "Community of the Crucified One" in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and she lives in an apartment in one of their mission houses in Vermont, where she is involved in children's Bible classes, fundraisers, and prison ministry, sharing the message "Jesus loves you."
Good Stories
Granna
by John Sumwalt
"He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock." For the Lord has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him. They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil....
Jeremiah 31:10b-12a
"I was born in a refugee camp, near the end of the last great war. We lived there until I was almost eight years old. I remember because we got word that we were going home on the eve of my eighth birthday. Oh, what a time it was."
The teenage boy smiled and moved his chair closer to the old woman's bed. He had heard the story a hundred times before, but he was glad to hear it again: glad that his grandmother was able to say anything at all. Sometimes she went for days at a time without saying a word, not recognizing anyone on the nursing home staff or any of the several family members who came often to see her. But the sound of her grandson's voice always seemed to bring her back. She would touch his face and say, "Jimmy, it's you." And then they would talk, as they always had since he was a small boy.
"Tell me about Granna," he said. It was his favorite part of the long saga of her life in the refugee camp. And so the old woman would tell the tale again.
"We were always hungry," she said. "Sometimes the fighting was so fierce around the camp that several weeks would pass before the relief trucks came with our rations. Father and Mother would make what food we had last as long as they could, eating very little themselves so that we children would have enough to keep us alive. There were many occasions when we were so weak from hunger that we had no strength to chase each other on the muddy paths between the tents, as we did when our bellies were full. It was then that she would gather all of us around her up on the hill, on the dry rocks overlooking the camp. 'It is story time,' she would say as she began to hobble up the path, pulling herself along with a cut-off section of metal pipe that she used as a cane. The word spread fast, and soon there would be more than 100 hungry children gathered around her on the rocks. There was always at least one little one on her lap, cuddled in close to the old, frayed army blanket that she wore over her shoulders like a shawl. Her name was Rachel, but she was known throughout the camp as Granna. It was the name one of the little ones had given to her -- his way of saying grandma. And so that's what we called her, for she was grandmother to us all.
"She always began by telling us how our people were once slaves in Egypt, how their cruel captors forced them to make bricks in the hot sun, and how God sent Moses to set them free and lead them through the wilderness to the promised land. She told of the day God sent quails into their camp when they were hungry, and after that gave them manna to gather from the ground each morning. She made the story sound so real, and we were so hungry that we could almost taste the tender manna. We used to look for manna on the ground around our tents, but we never found anything that was edible. The sand and pebbles that we did gather were mixed into a mud cake batter and baked on hot rocks by the fire. When the cakes were done, we covered them with imaginary honey and jam and pretended to eat them.
"Our favorite story of all those Granna told us from the 'Big Book,' as she called it, was the tale of Elijah, the Tishbite, and the Ravens. 'Elijah was a mighty prophet,' she would say, and then in a deep, dramatic voice she would recount the words he spoke to the wicked king who was oppressing his people. 'As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.' And then, she said, the rain stopped and there was no longer any morning dew. The King became so angry with Elijah that he had to flee for his life. God told him to go and hide beside a small stream in the desert. So the prophet went and lived by the stream, and great black birds called ravens brought him bread and meat twice a day, in the morning and in the evening.
"When the hunger pangs in our swollen stomachs were the worst, we used to scan the skies looking for ravens. Who knew, maybe God would send us bread and meat too.
"And then on one of those awful, hungry days that I shall never forget, we heard the sound of engines overhead and felt the force of a great wind on our faces. There were three large cargo helicopters hovering over the camp. Soon we saw parachutes open above our heads and begin to float gently to the earth carrying big cartons of food and supplies. We ran to the spot where they fell, hundreds of us, pushing and shoving, grabbing for anything we could find to eat. Lucky for us, one of the first boxes that broke open contained fresh apples. We gobbled down the apples, and we danced and sang around the camp in anticipation of the feast that we knew was to come as soon as the rations had been divided.
"After we had eaten, Granna gathered us all together again on the rocks above the camp, and this time instead of telling us a story, she taught us how to say thanks to the One who had sent us food to eat.
"Granna's stories saved our lives," the old woman sighed. "Oh, what a time it was."
One day when the boy came to the nursing home to see her, the old woman would not respond. He sat with her quietly for a while, holding onto one of her tired hands. And then he tried again. "Granna," he said, "are you there?" Slowly there appeared in her eyes a glimmer of recognition. "Jimmy," she said, "it's you."
This story is dedicated to my favorite mother-in-law, Phyllis Hunter Perry, who is known to her grandchildren as Granna.
Scrap Pile
Which Side of the Light?
by Paul Larsen
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1:5
Our members who have gone on the Appalachian Service Project trip can probably picture this setting better than most. Becky lived in the Virginia mountains in a poor, rundown home. The folks who lived in the mountains near her called her Becky Lou. City folks called her a hillbilly. Becky grew up in the lush beauty of those mountains without ever seeing them. She was blind. She could sing and play the dulcimer and the guitar. She sang there in the hollows, her voice bouncing and floating downhill all the way to the little stone Lutheran church in the valley. But she had no light -- no direction. Where does a blind hillbilly girl find a life? But one day, setting out from the Lutheran church, Sister Sophie came slowly up the hill. She was a deaconess, a sort of Lutheran nun -- few are left in the church. Sophie was one of the last. She came and sat on Becky's front porch and listened to her sing the songs of the mountains. When she had finished, Sophie said, "Becky, I want to take you to a doctor -- a special doctor who can do amazing operations on eyes. Perhaps he can help you."
The Lutheran church paid the bill for two tickets to Washington, D.C., all the operations Becky needed, and even a new cardboard suitcase. Becky tells how the doctors came into her room one night, removed the protective coverings, and for the very first time in her life, Becky saw light. She said: "It was the most beautiful thing I had ever imagined because with it came color and brightness, form and shine. But most of all," says Becky, "I knew my way -- I could see the worn path on the floor from my hospital bed to the door. I had a way." So days later Becky left the hospital with Sister Sophie, and she knew she had a way because she had light. Light was all she needed to help her build a life.
It was almost the opposite story for a boy named Bryan. Bryan had the light. He could see things better than most. His eyes were opening into a brilliant mind. He loved experimenting, and even as a little kid he came up with the most creative concoctions with his toy chemistry set. He still enjoyed experimenting in college. It was in the '60s when the Weathermen and the SDS were bombing buildings everywhere. Bryan read about it and, while he wasn't a reactionary or a rebel, he wanted to see if he could make a chemical explosive. Something went wrong and it exploded as he was working on it. The blast blew him out of the room and away from the resulting fire, but the sudden flash of chemicals was so bright that Bryan was blinded by the light.
Light is a strange thing -- it can both give sight and cause blindness. It can both hide and reveal. It all depends on your perspective.
Several years ago my little nephew got a flashlight as one of his Christmas gifts, and he loved it. He really thought it was neat to turn off the lights and lead us around in the dark. The light helps us see the way. But one of his favorite tricks was to shine the light in our eyes, and then we couldn't see a thing.
Light can do both things -- it can help us to see or it can keep us from seeing. It depends on which side of the light we are on. Jesus is described as the light of the world in our Gospel text, and as the light of the world he gives sight and helps us to see God. Some, however, are blinded by his light.
The scribes and Pharisees could not see God in or through Jesus. They were blind to the good in him and only saw a threat to organized religion and the status quo. While Jesus was the light of the world and came to reveal God to all who stand in darkness, that light blinded the religious leaders of the day. It is awfully easy for us to get smug and condemn the scribes and Pharisees and wonder why they were so blind that they couldn't see.
But I don't think that we should be too sure we would have done any differently. If some wild-eyed fanatic wandered in here with his dirty dozen and claimed to be God's Son, we wouldn't clamor to follow him -- we would probably commit him. Look at who Jesus surrounded himself with: unemployed fishermen; tax collectors who had just walked away from their tables; zealots anxious for the revolution. And if that wasn't enough, there were those women with less than respectable reputations.
I'm not sure we would see God in that lot, or even in their leader. Faith comes easier for us than for the scribes and Pharisees because we live after the fact. The people of Jesus' day had to judge by appearances. In many ways we suffer from the same kind of blindness to the light of Christ. Matthew, chapter 25, contains a parable about the last judgment where the righteous people are rewarded for caring for the hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, and sick of the world. On the other hand, the unrighteous are condemned for not caring in those same ways. Neither the righteous nor the unrighteous thought they had ever seen Christ, but Jesus, the judge, says caring for the least important person is just like caring for Him.
1 John 4:20 says: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brother or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." If we fail to see Jesus in the people around us then we are just as blind as the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day. We are standing on the wrong side of the light, and instead of it lighting our way and enabling us to see God, we are blinded by it and we live in the darkness of sin.
There are lots of things that can put us on the wrong side of the light -- selfishness, anger, worry, jealousy, pride -- any number of things. If we let those things control our lives, then we are blinded by Christ, the light, instead of illumined. We live in darkness instead of the brightness Christ offers. We live a life that is lost and filled with fear instead of a life following the guidance of Christ's light.
In the book Giants in the Earth, Per and Bridget have come from Norway to settle in the new land. They make the long journey from Ellis Island, near New York City, to the Dakota Territory. On the way they lose almost everything they have brought from Norway, except for Bridget's Norwegian trunk full of cookware and kitchen necessities. When they reach Dakota, Bridget sees the wide expanse of land lying before her and she feels a terrible dread. Many Norwegians, especially those from fjord country, experienced this fear of open spaces. In Norway they could see to the top of the hill. In the Dakotas there were no hills, no trees, not even a bump in the land, and you could see for miles.
One day Per comes in from the fields and Bridget is not around the house or the yard. He searches everywhere and finally finds her curled up in a tight ball inside the trunk. She will not come out. Per, in typical Norwegian fashion, closes the lid and sits by the trunk for days, waiting for Bridget to become desperately sick of the darkness. Finally, after nearly a week it happens. Per awakens with the sun and finds her standing by the window looking out on miles and miles of flat prairie land. She says, "This land frightens me, Per, but it's where we are and we'll have to find some way to live with it." Then, stoically, she sets out searching for a way in the light. She knows she can't find the way if she is curled up in the darkness.
We are often as frightened of the path of service as Bridget was of the prairie. We are comfortable with the close confines of our own existence. Most of the time we can see our way through our own problems and worries, but to take on the troubles of others is more than we can bear. We would rather be blind to them. We stop watching the news because it is all bad:
* It talks about hungry and naked and thirsty people.
* It talks about suicide bombings in Jerusalem.
* It talks about starvation in Africa.
* It talks about trouble in the world.
* It talks about those living in the darkness of life, and we can't see how to share our light.
But that is what we have been called to do -- to share the light of Christ's love:
* We need to let the light of Christ pierce the darkness of our lives so we can see.
* We need to let Him brighten the night of our worry with his promise of peace.
* We need to let the beacon of his love lead us away from our selfishness and onto the path of service.
* We need to let him enlighten us and help us to see others as he created them to be, rather than peering at them with the black eyes of anger or hostility or jealousy.
Christ is the light of the world and wants to illumine our lives and show us the ways in which we can serve him and his people. Becky received the gift of light and used it to see her way in life. Bryan was blinded by the light and will never see again. The disciples saw in Christ the light of the world. He revealed God to them, and they followed that light throughout their lives. The scribes and Pharisees were blind to who Jesus was and plotted and planned to extinguish his life.
How do we react to the light of Christ's love and grace? Which side of it are we on? Does the light show us our way or are we blinded by it? Jesus, the light of the world, bids us to see and to follow and to serve so that others might be enlightened by his love. Amen.
Let us pray: O God, we give you thanks for the light of Christ. Help us to see. Give us the guidance we need, not only to see our way through our own problems, but also to see how we might brighten the lives of others. Amen.
Paul Larsen is Senior Pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church, 1900 7th St. NW, New Brighton, Minnesota 55117.
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StoryShare, January 4, 2004, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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