Treasures
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Treasures" by Keith Hewitt
"Recognizing the Truth" by Peter Andrew Smith
What's Up This Week
Imagine going to the airport and being handed an envelope. In it are tickets and an itinerary, but you're not allowed to open it until it's time to board your flight -- how comfortable would you feel? The journey of life is like that -- as much as we like to think we've got a handle on things, we never really know where our journey's going to take us. When it takes us places we don't want to go, sometimes all we can do is have faith that it will bring us home again, and that the experience will make us stronger. In "Treasures," Keith Hewitt looks at one such journey. Peter Andrew Smith in his story "Recognizing the Truth," tells of a woman discovering God's love while struggling with her daughter's rejection.
* * * * * * * * *
Treasures
Keith Hewitt
Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15
He stood still and looked at the yard closely, old eyes scanning every tree and bush, every stepping stone. It was the same -- but it was different. There was a garden where his sandbox had been, and there in the corner, where a tire had swung from a sturdy old tree, someone had put in a patio. There was not so much as a stump remaining… and that was going to be a problem.
"Something wrong, Dad?"
Andrew Fukushima glanced at his daughter, looked away (he could not look at her for any length of time, still, without choking up), and shook his head. "No, Daughter. It's just that the tree was there, and that was what we used as a starting point." His voice was uncertain. Maybe this had been a mistake.
"Then maybe we can just leave," she suggested gently, with a quick, subtle glance at her watch -- a flick of the wrist, a downward dart of her eyes.
"No, no," he answered with slow stubbornness. It's here -- it's got to be. I just have to think, for a moment…" His voice trailed off, as though he was a toy winding down. He raised his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, then another, deeper one. They were cleansing breaths, for the place still smelled the same. The smell of agriculture that hung over the valley with a faint underpinning of flowers and just a touch of burnt diesel.
He smiled as he opened his eyes; looked around the yard again. The house stood there, and that hadn't changed. And if the house was there -- with his room on the second story, with its pitched ceiling -- then that meant the big branch that had been his surreptitious escape route must have hung right about there -- his eyes marked a spot almost touching the shuttered window -- and it would have run back toward the corner of the lot; his head swiveled and his eyes moved, as though he could see the branch, now, follow it back to the trunk of the old tree as he had done on more than a few nights, when it was necessary to slip out of the house after bedtime.
Unconsciously, he began to walk in that direction, his short, slightly unbalanced steps ticking off the years as they slid over manicured grass. His daughter's shoulders slumped -- just a bit -- and she started after him, stepping quickly to catch up so she was at his side. She raised her hand slightly, poised to take his elbow if he should stumble. If he noticed, he said nothing.
Their steps took them to the back left corner of the patio. There, her father paused again. He was looking toward her, but whatever images his eyes were passing along were being canceled out by far older, more visceral pictures swarming up from his past. "This was the tree," he said firmly, tapping one foot against a rose red paving block, "and it stood like so." He reached up with his arms, imitated the arch of the tree in his memories. "And Father stood right here, on the east side of the tree, and we took fifteen paces."
As he said it, he started to march forward, taking deliberate, measured steps. His daughter walked beside him, counting, and at fifteen they stopped. She looked down; there was nothing remarkable about the carpet of green grass beneath their feet. "Are you sure?"
He nodded, raised a hand, and pointed at his old window; his outstretched finger trembled slightly, leaflike. "See?" he said, "It lines up with the right corner of my window. This is it." He looked at her, this time registering her presence. "Did you bring the shovel?"
She raised the spade she had been carrying in her other hand. "Right here. It would have been a shame to forget it, after all this."
Her father looked at her, nodded. "It would be a shame to forget any of this," he said softly and reached for the shovel. She hesitated, let him take it from her hand; his grip was strong, forceful. He looked around once more, as though to make certain of the spot, and then he set the point of the spade to the sod and pushed down with his foot. The blade sunk deep, but the sod fought him -- he had to slice through it on four sides of a square before it would release its grip, struggling to hold onto the secrets of the past.
Once through the sod, the dirt was thick and the smell of moist, freshly turned earth drifted over them while earthworms squirmed for their lives in the hole, desperately fleeing the edge of the spade. As her father dug slowly, methodically, he spoke. It was a story she had heard before, learned at his knee, and then heard recounted often over decades since.
It was a story she had never expected to hear here, though.
"The soldiers came on my eighth birthday. They told us that we were now living in an exclusion zone and that we would have to leave our home and be taken to a relocation center within a week. They said it was because the Japanese Empire had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and the United States was now at war with them." As though to punctuate each sentence, he would shove the spade into the ground and turn out another shovelful of dirt each time he spoke.
"I did not really understand, but I knew that the land of my grandparents had done some terrible thing, and now we must pay the price. My father understood more than I did, and he tried to explain, but couldn't. So we packed what we could, and we got ready to leave our home. On that last day, my father called me out to the backyard and showed me a metal box. He said, 'Sadaharo, we must leave our home today, but I believe one day we will return. I am putting some treasures in this box, so that we can find them when we come back.' And then the two of us paced off the distance to this spot, and he dug a hole, and he wrapped the box in a linoleum cloth, and he buried it. And then we left."
He paused, then, leaned on the shovel for support, his back bent, his breathing hard. His daughter started to reach for the shovel, but he straightened up, shook his head. "We went to the camp, and a month or two after that, Father enlisted in the Army. He joined the 442nd Regiment. You know the rest."
She nodded, murmured, "Castellina."
"Castellina," he agreed, and began to dig once more. "He never came home. They told us he had been killed outside a town called Castellina, in Italy, shot by a German sniper. And that was that; they buried him there, in Italy."
His daughter nodded, remembering row upon row of clean white crosses marching across a Tuscan hillside. "I have seen the grave, Father."
He nodded. "I know you have." He was about to say more when there was a sort of odd sound from the hole at his feet -- not the simple chuff of steel slicing through dirt, but more of a clunk. He looked up quickly, surprise etched on his wrinkled face. A moment later he was on his knees, one hand gripped tightly around the handle of the shovel, to steady himself, the other reaching down into the earth, scraping frantically, shoving aside the cool, damp earth, pushing it against the sloped walls of the hole so he could push down farther, fingers tracing the rough outline of what lay beneath.
With another quick look at her watch, his daughter knelt beside him, helped him paw through the dirt until their fingers could grasp fabric and pull it up, ripping it upward and dragging along whatever lay wrapped inside. It was small, and light -- and hard and angular. Like a box.
It should not have been a surprise, but it was. Her father took it in two hands, now, set it gently on the grass beside the hole. She watched as he unwrapped it, carefully folding aside the old checkered table cloth, one corner at a time, to reveal the box at the center. It was smaller than a shoebox -- about the size of a cigar box, but metal, with a simple latch on the front. There was virtually no rust, and in the late afternoon sunlight, it appeared to be intact.
Her heart was racing as he snapped open the latch, used it to open the lid of the box. It made a faint creaking sound as it opened, and the smell of must puffed out of it as the lid fell back. Her father just stared at the contents for a moment or two, then reached in with trembling hand and began to take them out, one by one.
"Treasures," her grandfather had said -- and they were. A photograph of her father as a baby, then as a very serious boy on his first day of school, stiff and proud -- and slightly worried -- almost swimming in a starched white shirt that was not his size. A photograph of his parents, apparently taken at their wedding, and another of the bride and groom standing between two older couples.
He held that one up so his daughter could see it, and smiled -- a wistful expression. "My grandparents," he said simply. "I remember this picture -- it is the only one I ever saw of them." He held it out to her. "Your great grandparents, Daughter. You have never seen them."
She took the picture and studied it, committing each face to memory, for it seemed that such a remarkable find might be snatched away at any moment, lost again to history. That any of the photos had survived was miraculous. She raised her eyes from the picture; saw that her father was now holding a ring, with a small jade stone. "Your great grandmother's," he said. "My father would have wanted you to have it."
She accepted the ring, slipped it on her little finger -- the only one it would fit. Her great grandmother must have had tiny hands, she thought -- and then wondered at how she could even be thinking of such a mundane thing when something this marvelous was happening.
There were several more photos, a small ivory elephant ("My mother's," her father had breathed, as he held it in the palm of his hand, his expression suddenly childlike, again.), and an envelope. Her father took the envelope from the bottom of the box, turned it over several times -- there was no address, no writing at all. Carefully, he slipped a fingertip under the flap, at the corner, and then worked it down to the center, repeated it on the other side.
The envelope held a single piece of lined paper. He read it through once, paused and looked up that the sky. His daughter reached for it, but then he lowered his gaze once more, and began to read.
"My dearest Sadaharo. It is my great wish that it will be you who finds this box of treasures. We cannot take everything with us, and I fear that what we do take, we might lose along the way, so I wanted to be sure that there was some legacy left behind that you might one day enjoy.
"I do not know what will happen to us when we leave. I hope that our journey will be short, and that we will return here, but I fear it will be a long and difficult one for all of us. I want you to know that even though I do not know what will come, I have faith that we will survive, and faith that we will triumph over whatever happens. I have faith that one day all of this madness will end, and you will find these treasures.
"I know you don't understand what is happening, or why it is happening. Now that you are older, I feel it is safe to tell you that I don't understand, either. But our road is set before us, and we must make the journey forward, knowing that whatever happens will become a part of our history, and a part of what makes us who we are. Your grandparents journeyed many thousands of miles across a vast ocean to find their destiny. We must travel a little distance more, to find ours.
"But I have faith that our destiny will be worth the journey. If we do not return here, I pray that whatever journey you may find yourself on, after this one, will also end well."
Her father looked up, then, caught his daughter's eyes. "Signed, 'Your Father,' " he concluded, and lowered the single sheet of paper. Though his eyes glistened, he smiled gently at the woman who knelt next to him. "He had faith that the journey would help us become what we were meant to be. What do you think he would say if he could see you now?"
She sighed, and lowered her head, studying the letter in her father's hand. "I'd like to think he'd be proud of what we became."
He lay his hand over hers, and squeezed. "I know he would be, Daughter."
She was about to answer when a young man in a dark suit approached from a corner of the yard, where he had been standing deferentially for the last hour or so. She rose and nodded acknowledgment to him as he neared. "I'm sorry, but we're running late," he said apologetically -- but firmly. "We really must go, Madame President."
And the journey continued…
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT department at a major public safety testing organization.
Recognizing the Truth
Peter Andrew Smith
Luke 16:19-31
"God doesn't care about me," Jane snapped. "Just look at my life. I'm forty years old and one pay check away from living on the streets. I have a dead-end job, no life, and my daughter hates me."
"You asked me what I believe," Pastor John said. "I believe that God loves you."
"Well I don't. If it weren't for this soup kitchen I wouldn't be having a decent meal today." Jane began to butter a slice of bread. "God doesn't care anything about me that's for sure."
"Then we are going to disagree." Pastor John put his empty bowl on the passing cart. "Why do you say that Carrie hates you?"
"That's what she said this morning as she was heading out to the bus," Jane said. "All because I couldn't get her the new clothes she wanted for school."
"I saw her when I dropped off the twins and she looked fine to me."
"Her clothes may not be new but they are clean and they fit her." Jane sighed. "That didn't stop her from having a fit at me. She can't see beyond what she wants. I've always sacrificed to provide for her."
"You certainly do place her first."
"You bet I do. She's everything to me."
"She is growing into a fine young woman." Pastor John smiled. "I'm sure some day she will realize everything you have done for her."
"To hear her talk she is growing into a fine young woman despite what I am doing for her."
"Teenagers rarely appreciate a parent's love and sacrifices."
"That's for certain," Jane said. "Why can't she see how much I love her and appreciate everything I do for her? She's not stupid by any means."
"No, she is smart and capable."
"She's stupid when it comes to recognizing my love for her."
Pastor John tilted his head. "I'd say blind more than anything else."
"Blind? I think you are being too generous. She should know that everything I give her shows how much I care."
"Maybe she is just too focused on what she doesn't have."
Jane nodded. "She sure does like talking about what she doesn't have and pays no attention to what I can and do provide for her. She's always had a roof over her head, decent clothing, and food on the table. And don't get me started on what I have given up for her. I would quit working at the restaurant in an instant if I didn't have to support her."
"What would you do then?"
"Go back to school. My marks were decent enough before I got pregnant." Jane shook her head. "But there is no way I can go to school full time and raise her properly. You know what happened when she fell in with that crowd from the crossroads. I was terrified I was going to lose her to drugs."
"She has been doing well since rehab," Pastor John said. "I sometimes see her at the after school program."
"The program is great when I have a late day shift," Jane said. "This hot meal program is a help too."
"Well we do what we can in the church." He smiled. "Just one of the ways that we help show God's love."
"Back to that again? Sorry Pastor, I don't think that you can convince me that God loves me no matter what you say. I mean I appreciate the ways that the church helps me and Carrie but what does that have to do with God?"
"Everything we do and say in the church is because of God's love. We run the after school program and provide this hot meal because we believe God asks us to help other people. Those actions are one of the ways in which God loves you."
"If God really loved me this would be a steak dinner and not soup and sandwich," Jane said.
"Just like it you really loved Carrie you would have bought her a certain brand of clothes instead of the perfectly good ones you got for her?"
"I sacrifice for Carrie. Show me how God ever did anything like that for me."
Pastor John pointed at the cross on the wall.
Jane opened her mouth but shut it without saying anything. She ate in silence until the dishes were cleared and a dish of ice cream was placed in front of her.
She looked over at Pastor John. "Maybe God does care about me some."
"That is certainly what I believe," he said.
"Do you think Carrie will ever understand that I love her?"
Pastor John shrugged. "I certainly hope and pray that she will."
"Amen to that," Jane said. "Amen to that."
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
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StoryShare, September 26, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 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.
What's Up This Week
"Treasures" by Keith Hewitt
"Recognizing the Truth" by Peter Andrew Smith
What's Up This Week
Imagine going to the airport and being handed an envelope. In it are tickets and an itinerary, but you're not allowed to open it until it's time to board your flight -- how comfortable would you feel? The journey of life is like that -- as much as we like to think we've got a handle on things, we never really know where our journey's going to take us. When it takes us places we don't want to go, sometimes all we can do is have faith that it will bring us home again, and that the experience will make us stronger. In "Treasures," Keith Hewitt looks at one such journey. Peter Andrew Smith in his story "Recognizing the Truth," tells of a woman discovering God's love while struggling with her daughter's rejection.
* * * * * * * * *
Treasures
Keith Hewitt
Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15
He stood still and looked at the yard closely, old eyes scanning every tree and bush, every stepping stone. It was the same -- but it was different. There was a garden where his sandbox had been, and there in the corner, where a tire had swung from a sturdy old tree, someone had put in a patio. There was not so much as a stump remaining… and that was going to be a problem.
"Something wrong, Dad?"
Andrew Fukushima glanced at his daughter, looked away (he could not look at her for any length of time, still, without choking up), and shook his head. "No, Daughter. It's just that the tree was there, and that was what we used as a starting point." His voice was uncertain. Maybe this had been a mistake.
"Then maybe we can just leave," she suggested gently, with a quick, subtle glance at her watch -- a flick of the wrist, a downward dart of her eyes.
"No, no," he answered with slow stubbornness. It's here -- it's got to be. I just have to think, for a moment…" His voice trailed off, as though he was a toy winding down. He raised his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, then another, deeper one. They were cleansing breaths, for the place still smelled the same. The smell of agriculture that hung over the valley with a faint underpinning of flowers and just a touch of burnt diesel.
He smiled as he opened his eyes; looked around the yard again. The house stood there, and that hadn't changed. And if the house was there -- with his room on the second story, with its pitched ceiling -- then that meant the big branch that had been his surreptitious escape route must have hung right about there -- his eyes marked a spot almost touching the shuttered window -- and it would have run back toward the corner of the lot; his head swiveled and his eyes moved, as though he could see the branch, now, follow it back to the trunk of the old tree as he had done on more than a few nights, when it was necessary to slip out of the house after bedtime.
Unconsciously, he began to walk in that direction, his short, slightly unbalanced steps ticking off the years as they slid over manicured grass. His daughter's shoulders slumped -- just a bit -- and she started after him, stepping quickly to catch up so she was at his side. She raised her hand slightly, poised to take his elbow if he should stumble. If he noticed, he said nothing.
Their steps took them to the back left corner of the patio. There, her father paused again. He was looking toward her, but whatever images his eyes were passing along were being canceled out by far older, more visceral pictures swarming up from his past. "This was the tree," he said firmly, tapping one foot against a rose red paving block, "and it stood like so." He reached up with his arms, imitated the arch of the tree in his memories. "And Father stood right here, on the east side of the tree, and we took fifteen paces."
As he said it, he started to march forward, taking deliberate, measured steps. His daughter walked beside him, counting, and at fifteen they stopped. She looked down; there was nothing remarkable about the carpet of green grass beneath their feet. "Are you sure?"
He nodded, raised a hand, and pointed at his old window; his outstretched finger trembled slightly, leaflike. "See?" he said, "It lines up with the right corner of my window. This is it." He looked at her, this time registering her presence. "Did you bring the shovel?"
She raised the spade she had been carrying in her other hand. "Right here. It would have been a shame to forget it, after all this."
Her father looked at her, nodded. "It would be a shame to forget any of this," he said softly and reached for the shovel. She hesitated, let him take it from her hand; his grip was strong, forceful. He looked around once more, as though to make certain of the spot, and then he set the point of the spade to the sod and pushed down with his foot. The blade sunk deep, but the sod fought him -- he had to slice through it on four sides of a square before it would release its grip, struggling to hold onto the secrets of the past.
Once through the sod, the dirt was thick and the smell of moist, freshly turned earth drifted over them while earthworms squirmed for their lives in the hole, desperately fleeing the edge of the spade. As her father dug slowly, methodically, he spoke. It was a story she had heard before, learned at his knee, and then heard recounted often over decades since.
It was a story she had never expected to hear here, though.
"The soldiers came on my eighth birthday. They told us that we were now living in an exclusion zone and that we would have to leave our home and be taken to a relocation center within a week. They said it was because the Japanese Empire had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and the United States was now at war with them." As though to punctuate each sentence, he would shove the spade into the ground and turn out another shovelful of dirt each time he spoke.
"I did not really understand, but I knew that the land of my grandparents had done some terrible thing, and now we must pay the price. My father understood more than I did, and he tried to explain, but couldn't. So we packed what we could, and we got ready to leave our home. On that last day, my father called me out to the backyard and showed me a metal box. He said, 'Sadaharo, we must leave our home today, but I believe one day we will return. I am putting some treasures in this box, so that we can find them when we come back.' And then the two of us paced off the distance to this spot, and he dug a hole, and he wrapped the box in a linoleum cloth, and he buried it. And then we left."
He paused, then, leaned on the shovel for support, his back bent, his breathing hard. His daughter started to reach for the shovel, but he straightened up, shook his head. "We went to the camp, and a month or two after that, Father enlisted in the Army. He joined the 442nd Regiment. You know the rest."
She nodded, murmured, "Castellina."
"Castellina," he agreed, and began to dig once more. "He never came home. They told us he had been killed outside a town called Castellina, in Italy, shot by a German sniper. And that was that; they buried him there, in Italy."
His daughter nodded, remembering row upon row of clean white crosses marching across a Tuscan hillside. "I have seen the grave, Father."
He nodded. "I know you have." He was about to say more when there was a sort of odd sound from the hole at his feet -- not the simple chuff of steel slicing through dirt, but more of a clunk. He looked up quickly, surprise etched on his wrinkled face. A moment later he was on his knees, one hand gripped tightly around the handle of the shovel, to steady himself, the other reaching down into the earth, scraping frantically, shoving aside the cool, damp earth, pushing it against the sloped walls of the hole so he could push down farther, fingers tracing the rough outline of what lay beneath.
With another quick look at her watch, his daughter knelt beside him, helped him paw through the dirt until their fingers could grasp fabric and pull it up, ripping it upward and dragging along whatever lay wrapped inside. It was small, and light -- and hard and angular. Like a box.
It should not have been a surprise, but it was. Her father took it in two hands, now, set it gently on the grass beside the hole. She watched as he unwrapped it, carefully folding aside the old checkered table cloth, one corner at a time, to reveal the box at the center. It was smaller than a shoebox -- about the size of a cigar box, but metal, with a simple latch on the front. There was virtually no rust, and in the late afternoon sunlight, it appeared to be intact.
Her heart was racing as he snapped open the latch, used it to open the lid of the box. It made a faint creaking sound as it opened, and the smell of must puffed out of it as the lid fell back. Her father just stared at the contents for a moment or two, then reached in with trembling hand and began to take them out, one by one.
"Treasures," her grandfather had said -- and they were. A photograph of her father as a baby, then as a very serious boy on his first day of school, stiff and proud -- and slightly worried -- almost swimming in a starched white shirt that was not his size. A photograph of his parents, apparently taken at their wedding, and another of the bride and groom standing between two older couples.
He held that one up so his daughter could see it, and smiled -- a wistful expression. "My grandparents," he said simply. "I remember this picture -- it is the only one I ever saw of them." He held it out to her. "Your great grandparents, Daughter. You have never seen them."
She took the picture and studied it, committing each face to memory, for it seemed that such a remarkable find might be snatched away at any moment, lost again to history. That any of the photos had survived was miraculous. She raised her eyes from the picture; saw that her father was now holding a ring, with a small jade stone. "Your great grandmother's," he said. "My father would have wanted you to have it."
She accepted the ring, slipped it on her little finger -- the only one it would fit. Her great grandmother must have had tiny hands, she thought -- and then wondered at how she could even be thinking of such a mundane thing when something this marvelous was happening.
There were several more photos, a small ivory elephant ("My mother's," her father had breathed, as he held it in the palm of his hand, his expression suddenly childlike, again.), and an envelope. Her father took the envelope from the bottom of the box, turned it over several times -- there was no address, no writing at all. Carefully, he slipped a fingertip under the flap, at the corner, and then worked it down to the center, repeated it on the other side.
The envelope held a single piece of lined paper. He read it through once, paused and looked up that the sky. His daughter reached for it, but then he lowered his gaze once more, and began to read.
"My dearest Sadaharo. It is my great wish that it will be you who finds this box of treasures. We cannot take everything with us, and I fear that what we do take, we might lose along the way, so I wanted to be sure that there was some legacy left behind that you might one day enjoy.
"I do not know what will happen to us when we leave. I hope that our journey will be short, and that we will return here, but I fear it will be a long and difficult one for all of us. I want you to know that even though I do not know what will come, I have faith that we will survive, and faith that we will triumph over whatever happens. I have faith that one day all of this madness will end, and you will find these treasures.
"I know you don't understand what is happening, or why it is happening. Now that you are older, I feel it is safe to tell you that I don't understand, either. But our road is set before us, and we must make the journey forward, knowing that whatever happens will become a part of our history, and a part of what makes us who we are. Your grandparents journeyed many thousands of miles across a vast ocean to find their destiny. We must travel a little distance more, to find ours.
"But I have faith that our destiny will be worth the journey. If we do not return here, I pray that whatever journey you may find yourself on, after this one, will also end well."
Her father looked up, then, caught his daughter's eyes. "Signed, 'Your Father,' " he concluded, and lowered the single sheet of paper. Though his eyes glistened, he smiled gently at the woman who knelt next to him. "He had faith that the journey would help us become what we were meant to be. What do you think he would say if he could see you now?"
She sighed, and lowered her head, studying the letter in her father's hand. "I'd like to think he'd be proud of what we became."
He lay his hand over hers, and squeezed. "I know he would be, Daughter."
She was about to answer when a young man in a dark suit approached from a corner of the yard, where he had been standing deferentially for the last hour or so. She rose and nodded acknowledgment to him as he neared. "I'm sorry, but we're running late," he said apologetically -- but firmly. "We really must go, Madame President."
And the journey continued…
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT department at a major public safety testing organization.
Recognizing the Truth
Peter Andrew Smith
Luke 16:19-31
"God doesn't care about me," Jane snapped. "Just look at my life. I'm forty years old and one pay check away from living on the streets. I have a dead-end job, no life, and my daughter hates me."
"You asked me what I believe," Pastor John said. "I believe that God loves you."
"Well I don't. If it weren't for this soup kitchen I wouldn't be having a decent meal today." Jane began to butter a slice of bread. "God doesn't care anything about me that's for sure."
"Then we are going to disagree." Pastor John put his empty bowl on the passing cart. "Why do you say that Carrie hates you?"
"That's what she said this morning as she was heading out to the bus," Jane said. "All because I couldn't get her the new clothes she wanted for school."
"I saw her when I dropped off the twins and she looked fine to me."
"Her clothes may not be new but they are clean and they fit her." Jane sighed. "That didn't stop her from having a fit at me. She can't see beyond what she wants. I've always sacrificed to provide for her."
"You certainly do place her first."
"You bet I do. She's everything to me."
"She is growing into a fine young woman." Pastor John smiled. "I'm sure some day she will realize everything you have done for her."
"To hear her talk she is growing into a fine young woman despite what I am doing for her."
"Teenagers rarely appreciate a parent's love and sacrifices."
"That's for certain," Jane said. "Why can't she see how much I love her and appreciate everything I do for her? She's not stupid by any means."
"No, she is smart and capable."
"She's stupid when it comes to recognizing my love for her."
Pastor John tilted his head. "I'd say blind more than anything else."
"Blind? I think you are being too generous. She should know that everything I give her shows how much I care."
"Maybe she is just too focused on what she doesn't have."
Jane nodded. "She sure does like talking about what she doesn't have and pays no attention to what I can and do provide for her. She's always had a roof over her head, decent clothing, and food on the table. And don't get me started on what I have given up for her. I would quit working at the restaurant in an instant if I didn't have to support her."
"What would you do then?"
"Go back to school. My marks were decent enough before I got pregnant." Jane shook her head. "But there is no way I can go to school full time and raise her properly. You know what happened when she fell in with that crowd from the crossroads. I was terrified I was going to lose her to drugs."
"She has been doing well since rehab," Pastor John said. "I sometimes see her at the after school program."
"The program is great when I have a late day shift," Jane said. "This hot meal program is a help too."
"Well we do what we can in the church." He smiled. "Just one of the ways that we help show God's love."
"Back to that again? Sorry Pastor, I don't think that you can convince me that God loves me no matter what you say. I mean I appreciate the ways that the church helps me and Carrie but what does that have to do with God?"
"Everything we do and say in the church is because of God's love. We run the after school program and provide this hot meal because we believe God asks us to help other people. Those actions are one of the ways in which God loves you."
"If God really loved me this would be a steak dinner and not soup and sandwich," Jane said.
"Just like it you really loved Carrie you would have bought her a certain brand of clothes instead of the perfectly good ones you got for her?"
"I sacrifice for Carrie. Show me how God ever did anything like that for me."
Pastor John pointed at the cross on the wall.
Jane opened her mouth but shut it without saying anything. She ate in silence until the dishes were cleared and a dish of ice cream was placed in front of her.
She looked over at Pastor John. "Maybe God does care about me some."
"That is certainly what I believe," he said.
"Do you think Carrie will ever understand that I love her?"
Pastor John shrugged. "I certainly hope and pray that she will."
"Amen to that," Jane said. "Amen to that."
Peter Andrew Smith is an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada who currently serves at St. James United Church in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He is the author of All Things Are Ready (CSS), a book of lectionary-based communion prayers, as well as many stories and articles, which can be found listed at www.peterandrewsmith.com.
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StoryShare, September 26, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 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.
