That's Nuts
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Contents
"That's Nuts" by C. David McKirachan
"What Good Are They" by C. David McKirachan
"Crazy Talk" by Keith Hewitt
That's Nuts
by C. David McKirachan
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
When my mother was a little girl, she had a dream that the neighbor died. She didn’t tell anybody. A week later the neighbor was killed in an accident. It scared her, so she took it to her mother who told her sternly, if you have a dream like that, don’t tell anybody. Mom told me that left her with two problems: ‘Like that...’ What exactly did her mother mean; and secondly, she was left to stew with her own fear. Was she bad because she had dreams that came true?
We live in a culture that abhors the mystery of connections that aren’t wrapped in the packaging of science. We have retreated, some would say, advanced into the slice of the pie of understanding bounded by laws and rules. And these laws and rules are as hard line as what will happen if you drop certain types of silver ware or salt. To violate the parameters of superstition opens us to horror. To advocate opening oneself to the possibility of knowledge gained in other ways than scientific, opens us to scorn.
What if our materialistic understandings and laws aren’t the limits of reality? What if there are other ways and means of learning and functioning? Fantasy and Science fiction are relegated to comic books and ‘lower’ forms of art. Those are for children or people who live on the edge of the ‘real’ world. Yet there is a fascination that rises up in us when we encounter someone who has had an experience with ghosts or dreams that come true.
I would contend that we have locked ourselves in a very small room, smaller than that defined by the ‘superstitions’ of our ancestors. Just because something can’t be measured or defined by the laws and rules of science doesn’t make it not possible or even irrational. My father told me that the worst and most pervasive fallacy is that of arrogance. Isn’t it more irrational to deny that which we don’t understand or to limit reality to that which can be explained or proven by the system of understanding in vogue right now?
Daniel dreamed dreams. He took them seriously. So did a few others in the Scriptures, including Joseph, when he was about to do the decent thing and divorce Mary quietly. Who are we to claim that these dreams were random firings of their synapses?
It’s no wonder folk don’t bother coming to church. Their world view judges our scripture as an out-of-date collection of superstitious fairy tales. And we in fear of being judged as snake handlers come close to agreeing with them. If we are going to posit an all-powerful God, doesn’t it open the system to a whole new set of possibilities? And if we are going to be truly honest, aren’t we required by that honesty to allow science to exist side by side with all kinds of things that transcend the known? Haven’t most ‘break trough’s’ moved us into territories unknown or even unimagined?
I would submit that the world without the unexplainable is a dry and dusty environment. Thinking small rarely led anyone to reach toward greater heights. Aren’t we called to lead our people beyond the dry and dusty wilderness of the known into new lands of possibility? Dreams? Of course. Visions? Of course. Miracles? Of course. Science? Of course. They are not mutually exclusive any more than ice and water both being forms of H2O. The universe if full of things we have not seen or heard of and many that we will never understand. Our curiosity is a glory and a pain in the neck. But it is how we are made. So we are called beyond our small rooms, of superstition and of materialism. We are called to be children of the most high God.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Oh, sorry, that’s not allowed in here...
* * *
What Good Are They?
by C. David McKirachan
Ephesians 1:11-23
Children have been a big part of my life. I’ve raised and helped raise a few. Now there are grandchildren. There have been moments when I considered it my primary task in life to help them flourish, moments when my soul smiled at the smallest gesture, and moments when my heart was hamburger because of their words and actions. Sometimes I wonder why we do this to ourselves. Why do we invest so much into them, offering them our lives on platters? Why do we load them with expectations, as if they had a clue what it meant to carry someone’s life around in their pudgy hands? Why do we trust teenagers, some of the least dependable people, to direct themselves through the maze of becoming well balanced people? It’s no fault of theirs, they’re hormone poisoned.
Don’t get me wrong, I must say that I love them dearly. But why? Is it because we are chained to propagation of the species? Is it duty that has been drilled into our heads and super-egos?
I ran into a book a while ago that spoke about the idolatry of the American family. Its thesis was that we are doing them and us great harm by dumping so much into our kids. Life is more than this social contract. And if we insist on limiting ourselves to such a small part of what we are made to be, the family is crushed as we turn it into something it was never meant to be. What have children to follow if we are following them?
The church is a family. It is a group of people held together by a lot more that some promises we make when we join the club. We are held together by the Advocate, the gift that the Lord gave his bunch when he left them to be what he had called them to be. He did not consider it horrible to leave his children. He considered it appropriate. He trusted them, offering them the opportunity to inherit the gifts that waited to be accepted. All they had to do was open their hands, their minds, their view of who they were and what that meant to them and to the world.
One of my sons once told me that he had watched me get up in the morning, go to work, make no money to speak of. But he knew that every time I left the house and every time I came home, I was doing something to lift the world. He told me that that’s what he wanted to do. So much for my retirement plans, idealists are lousy bets for security. But I sat there and cried. He was calling me a saint. He was telling me I had been a light for him to follow. And I thought I was his father.
I don’t think any of us are saints to ourselves. Saints are people that show us what life is supposed to look like. Paul Tillich said that Christ was the clear window in the wall of mortality, through which shines the light of God. Our job is to get ourselves as clear as we can to let that light shine through us. Somehow we do that when we love each other. But we can’t do that if we forget that no one person is big or strong enough to carry our expectations and hopes and dreams. That’s called idolatry. We need to follow the lead of the one who was clear and do our best to shine with His light. That’s why he’s right there next to God. I’m not sure how that works with multi-dimensional beings, but I think we can figure out what the writer of Ephesians is getting at.
I don’t know if I did a good job with my kids. But I tried my best to avoid making them the center of my universe. I tried to remember that they were God’s kids. I tried to give them to God every day. I guess I still do.
My son called me the other night. He wanted to know if we were OK. After a few minutes of reassurance, he said, “Good. Now I can sleep better. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow. I love you. Good night.”
That was that. I guess that’s healthy. Good kid. Thank God. Amen.
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.
* * *
Crazy Talk
by Keith Hewitt
Luke 6:20-31
“That Galileean?he’s crazy, eh?”
The question came as the punctuation at the end of a long, pregnant silence.
The speaker?the younger of two men?was short and wiry, with dark hair, a mouth that seemed to always be on the verge of breaking into a smile, and eyes that tended to flit from place to place whenever he was standing still. He actually was smiling, now, as he asked his question?the first time he had spoken in nearly an hour, as the two walked along a sparsely traveled road. From the hillside outside of that nameless Galilean town until now, as they neared Capernaum and the foot traffic started to increase, the two had walked in silence, wrapped in thought.
It was uncharacteristic for the young man to be silent for such a long time, and his companion had been quietly thankful. With a sigh, he cast a glance at his companion, then looked back at the road, and the people who were starting to share it with them. “Oh?I don’t know, Stephen. Why do you think so?”
“’Blessed are the poor...blessed are the hungry...blessed are the grieving...’ It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been poor, and I’ve been hungry?and I can tell you for sure, I never felt blessed when I was. I felt scared, and lonely, and I wanted to make sure it never happened again.”
The older man shrugged, a gesture almost invisible beneath his cloak. “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t being literal. You know how these teachers can be.”
Stephen grunted. “The only teachers I ever had who were worth their salt were the ones who spoke plainly, and said what they meant.” Pause for a couple of steps. “You, for example.”
It was the older man’s turn to smile, then. “Perhaps it depends upon what you’re trying to teach, Stephen. This Galilean is?I think?trying to say something new, something very different than we’ve?than anyone?has heard before. So maybe he has to find new ways to say it.” He was quiet for a few moments, then, and when Stephen was about to open his mouth to speak, he added, “For instance, maybe this teacher is trying to say that when you are poor, or hungry, but not focused on that...when you’re not obsessed by your misfortune...you’re blessed.”
“So he’s telling people it’s OK to be hungry or poor? To just accept their lot and be done with it?” He paused, until their steps took them past a small family traveling the other direction?two children, a man, and a woman who was weeping softly, with a donkey carrying what looked like it might be everything they owned. “Like them?” he said, shaking his head back toward them as they passed. “They may have just lost their home?they should be happy?”
“Not happy,” his companion said slowly, “but content. Because wealth and property aren’t everything in this world. They aren’t even almost everything. They’re just things. Or maybe he’s just saying we need not be envious of the wealthy, because wealth isn’t everything. Even the wealthy still have problems of the heart and soul.”
Stephen snorted. “Problems of the heart and soul are vastly easier to deal with when you have the ability to keep body and soul together. There is no nobility in poverty, no blessing in being hungry.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps we’re not understanding what he means.”
“Perhaps because he’s a mad man, ranting through the countryside, making troubles out to be blessings so his deluded followers can think themselves rich.”
The older man cast a sideways look at Stephen. “You are very cynical for your age, Stephen.”
“What can I tell you, I’m an old soul.” There was a short silence, then, before he added, “And what about all that do-good nonsense? If someone wants your cloak, give them your shirt, too...if someone strikes you on one side, offer them the other...love your enemies. What a bunch of crap! Making a virtue out of helplessness is just wrongheaded.”
“Perhaps it’s the wisdom that comes from being conquered, or in conflict, for most of history, and realizing the pointlessness of violence.”
Stephen laughed, a short, sharp sound that caused a few heads to turn before they turned away, and went on about their business. “That’s rich. Coming from you, that’s rich. We know it’s the wisdom that comes from being weak...the wisdom that comes from taking a fault, and turning it into a virtue because you can never rise above the fault. Like saying, ‘Black is white...trust me.’”
They were through the gate, now, and the streets around them were starting to fill. They came to a door, unmarked, a short way from the gate, down a narrow street. The older man gestured toward it, and they entered before he spoke again.
“What if he’s sincere, Stephen? Just for a minute, think about it?what if he is sincere? What if he really believes?and is trying to get others to believe?that people just need to get along? That they need to be accepting? That hatred and violence are not the answer? That retribution is not a viable response to being attacked?”
Just inside the door, there was a single darkened room, lit only be a glowing ember in a small pot on the table against the far wall. Stephen touched a reed to the ember, used it to transfer a small flame to a lamp on the same table; it flickered, then grew brighter, casting shadows by its pale yellow light. Wordlessly, both men began to strip off their clothes. For the second time in a day, Stephen was uncharacteristically silent.
Then, as he picked up a red tunic that lay on a low stool and slipped it on, he said, “I did think about it. And it’s crazy talk. Love your enemy, let them do whatever they want to you?for the gods’ sake, help them do whatever they want to you?that is crazy talk, Iunio.”
Iunio pulled on his own tunic, which had hung from a peg by the table, and sat down to lace up his sandals. “I’m not so sure it is, anymore, Stephen.”
“Then you’re getting soft in your old age, Iunio,” Stephen teased, “maybe you’re just getting too old for this. I mean, I know you’re smarter than that. What kind of world would this be if people didn’t want to get richer? If people didn’t strive to acquire from others, or were content with what they had?” He picked up a sword and sheath, held them up for a moment before handing them to his companion. “What kind of world would we have if everybody decided that violence was something to be abhorred and avoided, and nobody was willing to wage war?”
Iunio took the sword and sheath, and strapped them around his waist, picked up his helmet, which had been sitting on the table by the sword. “I don’t know, Stephen. But I’ll be honest?there are days, now, when I wouldn’t mind finding out.”
Stephen looked at him closely in the gloom, finally smiled and waved a hand. “You almost had me, Iunio. I sometimes forget your sense of humor is very dry. Maybe we should both report to Old Man Lucius that we’ve decided to be pacifists after listening to the Galilean, eh?”
Iunio smiled faintly. “Sure, right? I wonder what he would say to that?”
And the two soldiers went off to make their reports?but not before Iunio pulled out his sword and stared at it for a moment or two, counting the nicks in the old faithful blade, and contemplating the pits in the metal where blood had blemished blade.
What kind of world would it be, he wondered, where he could hang it up and never strap it on again?
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 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.
"That's Nuts" by C. David McKirachan
"What Good Are They" by C. David McKirachan
"Crazy Talk" by Keith Hewitt
That's Nuts
by C. David McKirachan
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
When my mother was a little girl, she had a dream that the neighbor died. She didn’t tell anybody. A week later the neighbor was killed in an accident. It scared her, so she took it to her mother who told her sternly, if you have a dream like that, don’t tell anybody. Mom told me that left her with two problems: ‘Like that...’ What exactly did her mother mean; and secondly, she was left to stew with her own fear. Was she bad because she had dreams that came true?
We live in a culture that abhors the mystery of connections that aren’t wrapped in the packaging of science. We have retreated, some would say, advanced into the slice of the pie of understanding bounded by laws and rules. And these laws and rules are as hard line as what will happen if you drop certain types of silver ware or salt. To violate the parameters of superstition opens us to horror. To advocate opening oneself to the possibility of knowledge gained in other ways than scientific, opens us to scorn.
What if our materialistic understandings and laws aren’t the limits of reality? What if there are other ways and means of learning and functioning? Fantasy and Science fiction are relegated to comic books and ‘lower’ forms of art. Those are for children or people who live on the edge of the ‘real’ world. Yet there is a fascination that rises up in us when we encounter someone who has had an experience with ghosts or dreams that come true.
I would contend that we have locked ourselves in a very small room, smaller than that defined by the ‘superstitions’ of our ancestors. Just because something can’t be measured or defined by the laws and rules of science doesn’t make it not possible or even irrational. My father told me that the worst and most pervasive fallacy is that of arrogance. Isn’t it more irrational to deny that which we don’t understand or to limit reality to that which can be explained or proven by the system of understanding in vogue right now?
Daniel dreamed dreams. He took them seriously. So did a few others in the Scriptures, including Joseph, when he was about to do the decent thing and divorce Mary quietly. Who are we to claim that these dreams were random firings of their synapses?
It’s no wonder folk don’t bother coming to church. Their world view judges our scripture as an out-of-date collection of superstitious fairy tales. And we in fear of being judged as snake handlers come close to agreeing with them. If we are going to posit an all-powerful God, doesn’t it open the system to a whole new set of possibilities? And if we are going to be truly honest, aren’t we required by that honesty to allow science to exist side by side with all kinds of things that transcend the known? Haven’t most ‘break trough’s’ moved us into territories unknown or even unimagined?
I would submit that the world without the unexplainable is a dry and dusty environment. Thinking small rarely led anyone to reach toward greater heights. Aren’t we called to lead our people beyond the dry and dusty wilderness of the known into new lands of possibility? Dreams? Of course. Visions? Of course. Miracles? Of course. Science? Of course. They are not mutually exclusive any more than ice and water both being forms of H2O. The universe if full of things we have not seen or heard of and many that we will never understand. Our curiosity is a glory and a pain in the neck. But it is how we are made. So we are called beyond our small rooms, of superstition and of materialism. We are called to be children of the most high God.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Oh, sorry, that’s not allowed in here...
* * *
What Good Are They?
by C. David McKirachan
Ephesians 1:11-23
Children have been a big part of my life. I’ve raised and helped raise a few. Now there are grandchildren. There have been moments when I considered it my primary task in life to help them flourish, moments when my soul smiled at the smallest gesture, and moments when my heart was hamburger because of their words and actions. Sometimes I wonder why we do this to ourselves. Why do we invest so much into them, offering them our lives on platters? Why do we load them with expectations, as if they had a clue what it meant to carry someone’s life around in their pudgy hands? Why do we trust teenagers, some of the least dependable people, to direct themselves through the maze of becoming well balanced people? It’s no fault of theirs, they’re hormone poisoned.
Don’t get me wrong, I must say that I love them dearly. But why? Is it because we are chained to propagation of the species? Is it duty that has been drilled into our heads and super-egos?
I ran into a book a while ago that spoke about the idolatry of the American family. Its thesis was that we are doing them and us great harm by dumping so much into our kids. Life is more than this social contract. And if we insist on limiting ourselves to such a small part of what we are made to be, the family is crushed as we turn it into something it was never meant to be. What have children to follow if we are following them?
The church is a family. It is a group of people held together by a lot more that some promises we make when we join the club. We are held together by the Advocate, the gift that the Lord gave his bunch when he left them to be what he had called them to be. He did not consider it horrible to leave his children. He considered it appropriate. He trusted them, offering them the opportunity to inherit the gifts that waited to be accepted. All they had to do was open their hands, their minds, their view of who they were and what that meant to them and to the world.
One of my sons once told me that he had watched me get up in the morning, go to work, make no money to speak of. But he knew that every time I left the house and every time I came home, I was doing something to lift the world. He told me that that’s what he wanted to do. So much for my retirement plans, idealists are lousy bets for security. But I sat there and cried. He was calling me a saint. He was telling me I had been a light for him to follow. And I thought I was his father.
I don’t think any of us are saints to ourselves. Saints are people that show us what life is supposed to look like. Paul Tillich said that Christ was the clear window in the wall of mortality, through which shines the light of God. Our job is to get ourselves as clear as we can to let that light shine through us. Somehow we do that when we love each other. But we can’t do that if we forget that no one person is big or strong enough to carry our expectations and hopes and dreams. That’s called idolatry. We need to follow the lead of the one who was clear and do our best to shine with His light. That’s why he’s right there next to God. I’m not sure how that works with multi-dimensional beings, but I think we can figure out what the writer of Ephesians is getting at.
I don’t know if I did a good job with my kids. But I tried my best to avoid making them the center of my universe. I tried to remember that they were God’s kids. I tried to give them to God every day. I guess I still do.
My son called me the other night. He wanted to know if we were OK. After a few minutes of reassurance, he said, “Good. Now I can sleep better. I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow. I love you. Good night.”
That was that. I guess that’s healthy. Good kid. Thank God. Amen.
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.
* * *
Crazy Talk
by Keith Hewitt
Luke 6:20-31
“That Galileean?he’s crazy, eh?”
The question came as the punctuation at the end of a long, pregnant silence.
The speaker?the younger of two men?was short and wiry, with dark hair, a mouth that seemed to always be on the verge of breaking into a smile, and eyes that tended to flit from place to place whenever he was standing still. He actually was smiling, now, as he asked his question?the first time he had spoken in nearly an hour, as the two walked along a sparsely traveled road. From the hillside outside of that nameless Galilean town until now, as they neared Capernaum and the foot traffic started to increase, the two had walked in silence, wrapped in thought.
It was uncharacteristic for the young man to be silent for such a long time, and his companion had been quietly thankful. With a sigh, he cast a glance at his companion, then looked back at the road, and the people who were starting to share it with them. “Oh?I don’t know, Stephen. Why do you think so?”
“’Blessed are the poor...blessed are the hungry...blessed are the grieving...’ It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been poor, and I’ve been hungry?and I can tell you for sure, I never felt blessed when I was. I felt scared, and lonely, and I wanted to make sure it never happened again.”
The older man shrugged, a gesture almost invisible beneath his cloak. “I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t being literal. You know how these teachers can be.”
Stephen grunted. “The only teachers I ever had who were worth their salt were the ones who spoke plainly, and said what they meant.” Pause for a couple of steps. “You, for example.”
It was the older man’s turn to smile, then. “Perhaps it depends upon what you’re trying to teach, Stephen. This Galilean is?I think?trying to say something new, something very different than we’ve?than anyone?has heard before. So maybe he has to find new ways to say it.” He was quiet for a few moments, then, and when Stephen was about to open his mouth to speak, he added, “For instance, maybe this teacher is trying to say that when you are poor, or hungry, but not focused on that...when you’re not obsessed by your misfortune...you’re blessed.”
“So he’s telling people it’s OK to be hungry or poor? To just accept their lot and be done with it?” He paused, until their steps took them past a small family traveling the other direction?two children, a man, and a woman who was weeping softly, with a donkey carrying what looked like it might be everything they owned. “Like them?” he said, shaking his head back toward them as they passed. “They may have just lost their home?they should be happy?”
“Not happy,” his companion said slowly, “but content. Because wealth and property aren’t everything in this world. They aren’t even almost everything. They’re just things. Or maybe he’s just saying we need not be envious of the wealthy, because wealth isn’t everything. Even the wealthy still have problems of the heart and soul.”
Stephen snorted. “Problems of the heart and soul are vastly easier to deal with when you have the ability to keep body and soul together. There is no nobility in poverty, no blessing in being hungry.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps we’re not understanding what he means.”
“Perhaps because he’s a mad man, ranting through the countryside, making troubles out to be blessings so his deluded followers can think themselves rich.”
The older man cast a sideways look at Stephen. “You are very cynical for your age, Stephen.”
“What can I tell you, I’m an old soul.” There was a short silence, then, before he added, “And what about all that do-good nonsense? If someone wants your cloak, give them your shirt, too...if someone strikes you on one side, offer them the other...love your enemies. What a bunch of crap! Making a virtue out of helplessness is just wrongheaded.”
“Perhaps it’s the wisdom that comes from being conquered, or in conflict, for most of history, and realizing the pointlessness of violence.”
Stephen laughed, a short, sharp sound that caused a few heads to turn before they turned away, and went on about their business. “That’s rich. Coming from you, that’s rich. We know it’s the wisdom that comes from being weak...the wisdom that comes from taking a fault, and turning it into a virtue because you can never rise above the fault. Like saying, ‘Black is white...trust me.’”
They were through the gate, now, and the streets around them were starting to fill. They came to a door, unmarked, a short way from the gate, down a narrow street. The older man gestured toward it, and they entered before he spoke again.
“What if he’s sincere, Stephen? Just for a minute, think about it?what if he is sincere? What if he really believes?and is trying to get others to believe?that people just need to get along? That they need to be accepting? That hatred and violence are not the answer? That retribution is not a viable response to being attacked?”
Just inside the door, there was a single darkened room, lit only be a glowing ember in a small pot on the table against the far wall. Stephen touched a reed to the ember, used it to transfer a small flame to a lamp on the same table; it flickered, then grew brighter, casting shadows by its pale yellow light. Wordlessly, both men began to strip off their clothes. For the second time in a day, Stephen was uncharacteristically silent.
Then, as he picked up a red tunic that lay on a low stool and slipped it on, he said, “I did think about it. And it’s crazy talk. Love your enemy, let them do whatever they want to you?for the gods’ sake, help them do whatever they want to you?that is crazy talk, Iunio.”
Iunio pulled on his own tunic, which had hung from a peg by the table, and sat down to lace up his sandals. “I’m not so sure it is, anymore, Stephen.”
“Then you’re getting soft in your old age, Iunio,” Stephen teased, “maybe you’re just getting too old for this. I mean, I know you’re smarter than that. What kind of world would this be if people didn’t want to get richer? If people didn’t strive to acquire from others, or were content with what they had?” He picked up a sword and sheath, held them up for a moment before handing them to his companion. “What kind of world would we have if everybody decided that violence was something to be abhorred and avoided, and nobody was willing to wage war?”
Iunio took the sword and sheath, and strapped them around his waist, picked up his helmet, which had been sitting on the table by the sword. “I don’t know, Stephen. But I’ll be honest?there are days, now, when I wouldn’t mind finding out.”
Stephen looked at him closely in the gloom, finally smiled and waved a hand. “You almost had me, Iunio. I sometimes forget your sense of humor is very dry. Maybe we should both report to Old Man Lucius that we’ve decided to be pacifists after listening to the Galilean, eh?”
Iunio smiled faintly. “Sure, right? I wonder what he would say to that?”
And the two soldiers went off to make their reports?but not before Iunio pulled out his sword and stared at it for a moment or two, counting the nicks in the old faithful blade, and contemplating the pits in the metal where blood had blemished blade.
What kind of world would it be, he wondered, where he could hang it up and never strap it on again?
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 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.
