Talking To God
Stories
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Talking to God" by Rick McCracken-Bennett
Good Stories: "Semper Fi" by C. David McKirachan
"Joining the Bunch" by C. David McKirachan
What's Up This Week
God loves us. He always has and he always will. This week's StoryShare tells us how God will take care of us not matter where we are in our lives. We have so much to learn. God will wait, and he will help whenever needed. We just need to keep praying.
A Story to Live By
Talking to God
By Rick McCracken-Bennett
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
-- Hebrews 4:15-16 (NRSV)
Herman had been in AA for quite a few weeks before the fog began to lift and he realized that getting sober was one thing - staying sober, a day at a time, was something else entirely. There were steps he'd need to take, they kept telling him, and each one would help him get healthier, saner than before.
He had already admitted that he was powerless over alcohol. That was the easy part. He had admitted as much when he was drinking, but until recently it hadn't occurred to him that he could find a way to quit. It had taken him 35 years to get to the point where he could admit this and actually do something about it. And if he ever forgot just how powerless he once was - there were plenty of folks to remind him: his wife, his children, his boss, his parole officer, and his new friends in the program. Man! What a mess Herman had made of his life.
He believed in God, he told his sponsor - at least he used to believe in God. He wasn't so sure these days since he hadn't spoken to God sober in a long time and wasn't sure that God wanted to talk to him after all the broken promises he had made while waiting for the patrolman to run his plates and conduct a field sobriety test. He hadn't darkened the door of his church for a long, long time. Sunday mornings were a good, quiet time (while the rest of the family was off to Sunday school and church) to nurse a hangover. He always promised he be right along, save me a seat. But he never did come right along. In fact, he kept very few of the promises he made in those days.
As he cleared up and began to hear the AA message over and over and over, it began to trouble him that he didn't quite know what to make of this spiritual program. He didn't feel God's presence, that's for sure. Over time he was told that this God, this higher power, could restore his sanity. Fine, but where was this God? Where had this God, this higher power (as everyone insisted on calling him) been hiding when he was drinking? Where was God now that he was sober? Why, if there was a God, hadn't God prevented his divorce that happened after he got sober (which was "too little, too late" as his ex reminded him)?
"Just move on," his sponsor would say. "Don't worry about it. You're sober now, that's all that matters. Most of us come to believe in this God in time; so don't be anxious about it. We'll come back to it." Herman already knew that they would indeed get back to it since he and his new friends covered the same material over and over and over again. "We're quick forgetters," they would remind each other.
After a time Herman got up his courage to look more closely at the life he had led while he was drinking. His sponsor encouraged him to write it down - a searching and fearless moral inventory, he called it. He got the searching part. That was easy. With each passing day, it seemed, he remembered more and more about his past. But fearless?! It was nothing but fear. His sponsor was quick to add, "Write down the good stuff, too. Account for the good things you did, despite your drinking." He did, but that didn't take away the fear of remembering and seeing his misdeeds in black and white.
Herman's inventory began with a note here and a word there. And it grew to pages upon pages of one legal pad and then a second. It didn't come to him all at once. He thought that maybe he was purposely blocking some of it since he knew what he would need to do with it - that is, he would need to use this "homework" to guide his conversation with himself, his God, and another human being, as he got honest about the exact nature of his wrongs. How could he ever do this? How could he handle the shame? Oh, he could admit his wrongs to himself, and to God (wherever God was anyway), but to sit down with another human being?! That seemed too much to expect from anyone.
Finally, with much encouragement, Herman took his sponsor's advice, and called the minister where his family (minus him) went to church, and asked for some time to talk.
They met in the pastor's study and after some awkward moments, Herman told him why he was there. He was an alcoholic and had been working the steps and it seemed to his sponsor anyway, that it was time to admit to himself, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of his wrongs. But...
"But what?" the pastor asked.
"Well, except for when I was in trouble and wanted a way out, I haven't talked to God in years. I thought it would be easy to confess to God... harder than to you. But it is God I'm having trouble with. I just don't know. How could God possibly forgive me for what I've done?"
The pastor turned around in his chair, pulled a Bible off his desk, and flipped through the pages. "Here... I want to read something to you. It's from the Letter to the Hebrews. 'The word of God... is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.' You see, God already knows your inner most thoughts and concerns, and shame. Here's some more, 'Before him no one is hidden, all are naked to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.' Now here is the punch line, 'For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who, in every respect, has been tested as we are, yet did not sin.' You listening?" Herman nodded slowly. " 'Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.'" The pastor closed his Bible and placed it on his desk. "Do you understand what I've read to you, Herman? Your God, though you don't know him so well yet, understands your weakness and wants you to boldly come before him to receive the forgiveness that you so desperately need. Are you ready to try? Are you ready to admit to God what your life has been like, where you have fallen short, the people you have hurt along the way?"
Herman nodded, picked up his wrinkled sheets of legal pad and quietly started, "I began drinking when I was 13. I stole money from my parents and booze from their cabinet. As I got older..." And he went on and on.
And, an hour or so later Herman understood not only what it meant to approach God with boldness, but even more so, what it meant to receive God's mercy and find God's grace in a time of need. And he walked out of the pastor's study a new man. A man who now talked to God all the time.
Rick McCracken-Bennett, an Episcopal priest and church planter, is the founding pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, Ohio. Rick began his ministry as a Roman Catholic priest, and he has also served as an alcohol and drug treatment counselor and as the director of an outpatient treatment center for adults and children. McCracken-Bennett has been an avid storyteller for almost 20 years, sharing his stories in churches, libraries, schools, and conferences. He is a member of the National Storytelling Network, the National Organization of Biblical Storytellers, and the Storytellers of Central Ohio. His doctoral thesis, Future Story, explored the use of stories to help bring about change in the church. McCracken-Bennett is a graduate of Findlay College, St. Meinrad School of Theology, and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
Good Stories
Semper Fi
By C. David McKirachan
Mark 10:17-31
I had a friend in one of my former congregations who spent two tours in Vietnam. Marines are tough guys. Semper Fi isn't a football cheer. It's a statement of stubborn willingness to walk into hell because that's their job. That's why he did two tours.
He will never recover. He has a lovely wife and great kids and a good job and a beautiful house and a deep faith. But the horror that he witnessed and shared will never leave him. It stalks him. It breathes its fetid stink on him and he struggles to be something other than crushed every day. When the children get in an argument he walks out the door, into rain or snow or sunshine and makes his way to a rock in the woods behind his house. He sits there until the screams of the wounded and the whistle of shrapnel recede.
He called me coach and told me he had my back. He and I were bound by a relationship that did not include agreeing with each other about much of anything. Other than both being Giants fans, our politics and our demeanors and our interpretations of our calls from God seemed worlds apart to most who saw us together.
I respected him and I still do. I didn't care how many medals he won or much else of the measurable bits and pieces of achievement he accumulated. I didn't even care about his preferences in music. Country western just doesn't do it for me. What mattered to me was his willingness to grapple with his demons without using others as excuses for his pain. He shared it with me and I will always count that a great privilege. But he never turned it on me or anyone else. Semper Fi.
Jesus had little in common with the rich young ruler. The guy was a blue blood, part of the class that hated the inclusive and forgiving grace our Lord preached. Jesus knew the poor guy was trapped in traditions and life situations that were iron clad. But it says simply, Jesus loved him.
Too often I find myself being faithful to destructive patterns. Too often when asked to become a new being I can do little but make it out into the backyard and find a quiet place to calm down. Too often I'm terrified by that which has been rather than being drawn to what could be.
There are so many lessons to be learned in this passage and in the whole Bible. But perhaps this simple phrase is the center and crux of them all. In the midst of our hells, with understanding built on acceptance and compassion our Lord loves us. Not because we're good or even able to take necessary steps to get better. He loves us, as we are, broken and chronically trapped in the warfare of our broken lives.
He didn't go to the cross because of our medals or our successes. He went there because he loves us even in our hells. Even there he will not desert us.
Semper Fi.
Joining the Bunch
By C. David McKirachan
Psalm 26
Sometimes when I read the Psalms I run into stuff that makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's not what I'd say to God. This guy sounds like a self-righteous prude. But part of the discipline of reading the Bible is allowing it to speak to us in spite of our prejudices. So, in this case I looked at it again, backed up to get a better view and tripped over something.
I like to consider myself an inclusive and accepting person. I'll put up with just about anything in the name of bringing in the lost. I don't care if they smell bad, spit on the floor, or vote for nuking the whales, they're children of God, even if they act like spawn of Satan. But back there in the cobwebs of my attic there's this box that is full of creepy crawly nastiness. After I left the 26th Psalm, I realized again that I'm prejudiced against people who are self-righteous. The ones who are convinced they're right and anyone who disagrees with them is not only wrong, but bad. They're good at drawing lines with the magic markers called legal, proper, nice, practical, traditional, biblical, and the kicker, God's will. The lines they draw make it very clear who's in and who's out. Negotiations don't work. Logical argument and debate aren't options. Learning new parameters for virtue and grace is impossible.
You can hear in my prose that I have little patience for this "kind." Now does that sound like I've just picked up my own magic marker? I don't think that's much of an "even place" for my foot to stand.
So you see, God's Word did it again. It grabbed me and shook me and demonstrated to me that I've got a lot to learn. My judgments are little better than those I despise. And in the process of judging them, I've joined them in their sin.
But I still can't figure out what I'm supposed to learn from the "begats." Maybe if I keep reading them something will dawn. They're always good for insomnia.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. Two of his books, I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder, have been published by Westminster John Knox Press. McKirachan was raised in a pastor's home and he is the brother of a pastor, and he has discovered his name indicates that he has druid roots. Storytelling seems to be a congenital disorder. He lives with his 21-year-old son Ben and his dog Sam.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and email the story to us.
**************
StoryShare, October 15, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "Talking to God" by Rick McCracken-Bennett
Good Stories: "Semper Fi" by C. David McKirachan
"Joining the Bunch" by C. David McKirachan
What's Up This Week
God loves us. He always has and he always will. This week's StoryShare tells us how God will take care of us not matter where we are in our lives. We have so much to learn. God will wait, and he will help whenever needed. We just need to keep praying.
A Story to Live By
Talking to God
By Rick McCracken-Bennett
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
-- Hebrews 4:15-16 (NRSV)
Herman had been in AA for quite a few weeks before the fog began to lift and he realized that getting sober was one thing - staying sober, a day at a time, was something else entirely. There were steps he'd need to take, they kept telling him, and each one would help him get healthier, saner than before.
He had already admitted that he was powerless over alcohol. That was the easy part. He had admitted as much when he was drinking, but until recently it hadn't occurred to him that he could find a way to quit. It had taken him 35 years to get to the point where he could admit this and actually do something about it. And if he ever forgot just how powerless he once was - there were plenty of folks to remind him: his wife, his children, his boss, his parole officer, and his new friends in the program. Man! What a mess Herman had made of his life.
He believed in God, he told his sponsor - at least he used to believe in God. He wasn't so sure these days since he hadn't spoken to God sober in a long time and wasn't sure that God wanted to talk to him after all the broken promises he had made while waiting for the patrolman to run his plates and conduct a field sobriety test. He hadn't darkened the door of his church for a long, long time. Sunday mornings were a good, quiet time (while the rest of the family was off to Sunday school and church) to nurse a hangover. He always promised he be right along, save me a seat. But he never did come right along. In fact, he kept very few of the promises he made in those days.
As he cleared up and began to hear the AA message over and over and over, it began to trouble him that he didn't quite know what to make of this spiritual program. He didn't feel God's presence, that's for sure. Over time he was told that this God, this higher power, could restore his sanity. Fine, but where was this God? Where had this God, this higher power (as everyone insisted on calling him) been hiding when he was drinking? Where was God now that he was sober? Why, if there was a God, hadn't God prevented his divorce that happened after he got sober (which was "too little, too late" as his ex reminded him)?
"Just move on," his sponsor would say. "Don't worry about it. You're sober now, that's all that matters. Most of us come to believe in this God in time; so don't be anxious about it. We'll come back to it." Herman already knew that they would indeed get back to it since he and his new friends covered the same material over and over and over again. "We're quick forgetters," they would remind each other.
After a time Herman got up his courage to look more closely at the life he had led while he was drinking. His sponsor encouraged him to write it down - a searching and fearless moral inventory, he called it. He got the searching part. That was easy. With each passing day, it seemed, he remembered more and more about his past. But fearless?! It was nothing but fear. His sponsor was quick to add, "Write down the good stuff, too. Account for the good things you did, despite your drinking." He did, but that didn't take away the fear of remembering and seeing his misdeeds in black and white.
Herman's inventory began with a note here and a word there. And it grew to pages upon pages of one legal pad and then a second. It didn't come to him all at once. He thought that maybe he was purposely blocking some of it since he knew what he would need to do with it - that is, he would need to use this "homework" to guide his conversation with himself, his God, and another human being, as he got honest about the exact nature of his wrongs. How could he ever do this? How could he handle the shame? Oh, he could admit his wrongs to himself, and to God (wherever God was anyway), but to sit down with another human being?! That seemed too much to expect from anyone.
Finally, with much encouragement, Herman took his sponsor's advice, and called the minister where his family (minus him) went to church, and asked for some time to talk.
They met in the pastor's study and after some awkward moments, Herman told him why he was there. He was an alcoholic and had been working the steps and it seemed to his sponsor anyway, that it was time to admit to himself, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of his wrongs. But...
"But what?" the pastor asked.
"Well, except for when I was in trouble and wanted a way out, I haven't talked to God in years. I thought it would be easy to confess to God... harder than to you. But it is God I'm having trouble with. I just don't know. How could God possibly forgive me for what I've done?"
The pastor turned around in his chair, pulled a Bible off his desk, and flipped through the pages. "Here... I want to read something to you. It's from the Letter to the Hebrews. 'The word of God... is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.' You see, God already knows your inner most thoughts and concerns, and shame. Here's some more, 'Before him no one is hidden, all are naked to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.' Now here is the punch line, 'For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who, in every respect, has been tested as we are, yet did not sin.' You listening?" Herman nodded slowly. " 'Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.'" The pastor closed his Bible and placed it on his desk. "Do you understand what I've read to you, Herman? Your God, though you don't know him so well yet, understands your weakness and wants you to boldly come before him to receive the forgiveness that you so desperately need. Are you ready to try? Are you ready to admit to God what your life has been like, where you have fallen short, the people you have hurt along the way?"
Herman nodded, picked up his wrinkled sheets of legal pad and quietly started, "I began drinking when I was 13. I stole money from my parents and booze from their cabinet. As I got older..." And he went on and on.
And, an hour or so later Herman understood not only what it meant to approach God with boldness, but even more so, what it meant to receive God's mercy and find God's grace in a time of need. And he walked out of the pastor's study a new man. A man who now talked to God all the time.
Rick McCracken-Bennett, an Episcopal priest and church planter, is the founding pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church in New Albany, Ohio. Rick began his ministry as a Roman Catholic priest, and he has also served as an alcohol and drug treatment counselor and as the director of an outpatient treatment center for adults and children. McCracken-Bennett has been an avid storyteller for almost 20 years, sharing his stories in churches, libraries, schools, and conferences. He is a member of the National Storytelling Network, the National Organization of Biblical Storytellers, and the Storytellers of Central Ohio. His doctoral thesis, Future Story, explored the use of stories to help bring about change in the church. McCracken-Bennett is a graduate of Findlay College, St. Meinrad School of Theology, and Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
Good Stories
Semper Fi
By C. David McKirachan
Mark 10:17-31
I had a friend in one of my former congregations who spent two tours in Vietnam. Marines are tough guys. Semper Fi isn't a football cheer. It's a statement of stubborn willingness to walk into hell because that's their job. That's why he did two tours.
He will never recover. He has a lovely wife and great kids and a good job and a beautiful house and a deep faith. But the horror that he witnessed and shared will never leave him. It stalks him. It breathes its fetid stink on him and he struggles to be something other than crushed every day. When the children get in an argument he walks out the door, into rain or snow or sunshine and makes his way to a rock in the woods behind his house. He sits there until the screams of the wounded and the whistle of shrapnel recede.
He called me coach and told me he had my back. He and I were bound by a relationship that did not include agreeing with each other about much of anything. Other than both being Giants fans, our politics and our demeanors and our interpretations of our calls from God seemed worlds apart to most who saw us together.
I respected him and I still do. I didn't care how many medals he won or much else of the measurable bits and pieces of achievement he accumulated. I didn't even care about his preferences in music. Country western just doesn't do it for me. What mattered to me was his willingness to grapple with his demons without using others as excuses for his pain. He shared it with me and I will always count that a great privilege. But he never turned it on me or anyone else. Semper Fi.
Jesus had little in common with the rich young ruler. The guy was a blue blood, part of the class that hated the inclusive and forgiving grace our Lord preached. Jesus knew the poor guy was trapped in traditions and life situations that were iron clad. But it says simply, Jesus loved him.
Too often I find myself being faithful to destructive patterns. Too often when asked to become a new being I can do little but make it out into the backyard and find a quiet place to calm down. Too often I'm terrified by that which has been rather than being drawn to what could be.
There are so many lessons to be learned in this passage and in the whole Bible. But perhaps this simple phrase is the center and crux of them all. In the midst of our hells, with understanding built on acceptance and compassion our Lord loves us. Not because we're good or even able to take necessary steps to get better. He loves us, as we are, broken and chronically trapped in the warfare of our broken lives.
He didn't go to the cross because of our medals or our successes. He went there because he loves us even in our hells. Even there he will not desert us.
Semper Fi.
Joining the Bunch
By C. David McKirachan
Psalm 26
Sometimes when I read the Psalms I run into stuff that makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's not what I'd say to God. This guy sounds like a self-righteous prude. But part of the discipline of reading the Bible is allowing it to speak to us in spite of our prejudices. So, in this case I looked at it again, backed up to get a better view and tripped over something.
I like to consider myself an inclusive and accepting person. I'll put up with just about anything in the name of bringing in the lost. I don't care if they smell bad, spit on the floor, or vote for nuking the whales, they're children of God, even if they act like spawn of Satan. But back there in the cobwebs of my attic there's this box that is full of creepy crawly nastiness. After I left the 26th Psalm, I realized again that I'm prejudiced against people who are self-righteous. The ones who are convinced they're right and anyone who disagrees with them is not only wrong, but bad. They're good at drawing lines with the magic markers called legal, proper, nice, practical, traditional, biblical, and the kicker, God's will. The lines they draw make it very clear who's in and who's out. Negotiations don't work. Logical argument and debate aren't options. Learning new parameters for virtue and grace is impossible.
You can hear in my prose that I have little patience for this "kind." Now does that sound like I've just picked up my own magic marker? I don't think that's much of an "even place" for my foot to stand.
So you see, God's Word did it again. It grabbed me and shook me and demonstrated to me that I've got a lot to learn. My judgments are little better than those I despise. And in the process of judging them, I've joined them in their sin.
But I still can't figure out what I'm supposed to learn from the "begats." Maybe if I keep reading them something will dawn. They're always good for insomnia.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. Two of his books, I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder, have been published by Westminster John Knox Press. McKirachan was raised in a pastor's home and he is the brother of a pastor, and he has discovered his name indicates that he has druid roots. Storytelling seems to be a congenital disorder. He lives with his 21-year-old son Ben and his dog Sam.
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and email the story to us.
**************
StoryShare, October 15, 2006, issue.
Copyright 2006 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., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
