The Visitor
Illustration
Stories
Object:
Contents
"The Visitor" by Keith Hewitt
"It Takes All Kinds" by C. David McKirachan
"The Plunge" by Craig Kelly
* * * * * * * *
The Visitor
by Keith Hewitt
Isaiah 60:1-6
Was it chance?
A trio of giant planets swept along their orbits as though they followed well-worn grooves in the fabric of space-time, leaving chaos in their wake with each revolution, their ever-shifting position relative to each other and the sun making for a confusing game of tug-of-war with four players instead of two. Farther out -- much farther out, a quarter of the way to the next star -- the tendrils of the giants' gravity dragged through the halo of gas and ice that enveloped the solar system, pulling here, pushing there until they managed to lure a rock out of its age-old path and start bending it toward the inner solar system.
The rock was cold as a tax collector's heart and perhaps twenty miles in diameter -- if something the general shape of a potato could be said to have a diameter. It was mostly accreted dust and carbon, with a thick coating of frozen gas collected over unnumbered years by the slow process of collision within the cloud. Even after its journey started, it plunged through the outer solar system in utter cold and darkness, unnoticed.
Almost a light year sunward, a pharaoh named Ramses clashed with a slave leader, eventually conceding defeat in the face of events he could not understand. The slaves, set free, began to make their way home...
There is no such thing as a straight line in space -- all movement happens along a curved trajectory, or orbit. The orbit is determined by the initial speed of the object and the gravitational effects of all astronomical bodies in its area. Objects close by exert more gravitational force, while objects farther away exert less... but even a lesser exertion of force, over time, can have significant consequences. For an object to take any given path, all of the different forces must line up in just the right way to guide it along the way.
And nothing happens very quickly.
The rock followed a long, eccentric, elliptical orbit. Generation after generation, it followed a path that would eventually lead it past the orbits of all of the gas giants -- including a close encounter with Neptune that gave its trajectory a significant tweak. The sun grew brighter, began to show an actual disk, but the rock still slumbered in the chill of deep space.
Nebuchadnezzar II's armies lay siege to the city of Jerusalem and captured it. There is great bloodshed and Solomon's Temple is destroyed before the leaders of Israel are exiled to Babylon...
As the rock swung in silent orbit, odd things began to happen. Its outer surface began to change as sheets of frozen gas started to flex beneath the uneven warming. Further down, the rock itself began to struggle above near absolute zero. Past the giants, now, its path swung into the asteroid belt -- debris of a failed planet between Mars and Jupiter. Here, no single rock exerted much pull but the cumulative effect of dozens of close approaches made still more changes to its path, bent the visitor's orbit a little more.
A local despot with a talent for picking the winning side -- or throwing himself on the mercy of the winner if he picked the wrong one -- is put in charge of Judea. Eager to please his Roman masters and secure his place near the top of the power structure, he builds a great harbor for Roman shipping in Caesaria, and is quick to obey when asked to do something by his Roman overlords. In order to elevate his status among his own people, he embarks on a tremendous building spree, eventually replacing the ruins of Solomon's Temple with the architectural marvel known as the Second Temple.
The sun is now nearly as large as it is when seen from Earth and the warmth of its rays has wrought great changes to the rock. The surface, once dead and black, is now alive with great geysers, fountains of gas, and dust shooting high into the sky. Some of this mass, ejected from the rock, is blown backward by the invisible solar wind, creating a long, luminous tail to the rock, always pointing straight away from the sun.
For the first time in its history, it is now bright enough to be seen from Earth, a bright point of reflected light with the bright streak of a tail behind it. With each day that passes, as it plunges closer and closer to the sun, its brightness grows and its tail grows longer, fed by explosions of gas and debris on the rock.
Hundreds of thousands of miles sunward, a group of scholars in the land known as Persia look up at the night sky and wonder at the object that rises at sunset and travels to the west overnight, pointing like an arrow. Several scholars of the ancient texts of Israel voice the opinion that it must mark the birth of a new king -- a Messiah. Others suggest that, whatever it is, it must be studied... and so its rising and setting points are calculated and plans are made to follow the path it seems to be tracing.
And at the other end of that path, though they don't yet know it, a young woman is arriving in Bethlehem Ephrata with her husband. Lost in her own thoughts, she looks up at the sky and slowly smiles at what she sees there... For the light has come.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
It Takes All Kinds
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 2:1-12
My wife's boss is a CEO. He works somewhere in the stratosphere. He told her that there are three kinds of people: rabbits, attack dogs, and owls. Rabbits are big on flight and freeze when new or difficult situations arise. Attack dogs live up to their name. They're go-getters, assertive or aggressive, winning is what they're about. Owls fly up to a high perch to get a better view of the entire situation, analyzing, figuring out things before they glide into or away from what's happening. He said he wants 80% attack dogs and 20% owls in his corporation. They rabbits you can have.
The Magi weren't kings. They were in the business of information and used it to affect the more overt centers of power. They had informants everywhere. They were feared because sometimes their subtle influence took the form of assassination. They studied texts, dreams, and read the stars. They were the NSA of the Persian Empire. Kinda creepy, huh? No wonder Herod and all Jerusalem were troubled when they showed up and announced they were looking for a king.
Daniel, as in the lions' den was considered one of the first and greatest Magi. So there may have been Jewish representatives in the bunch that came to Herod. They wouldn't have made such a show unless they were sending a message. They knew Herod's character: paranoid and corrupt. They may have been looking for a successor to the Persian throne in a time of weak kings and instability. The gifts they brought were calling cards to let this newly rising ruler whose star was ascending that they knew his character and potential and doom. They'd read it in the stars. They were owls -- geeks of the first degree.
A friend of mine from high school invited me to come to a meeting of the Astronomy Club. I thought he was nuts. The astronomy club was a dead end of geek-dom. If you hung around with these guys, you were considered less than human. But my friend was vaguely cool and I wasn't on the road to celebrity status, so I figured I could put up with one meeting. Besides, I was a hormone poisoned teenaged boy. My thoughts ran to telescopes and all the things you could see with them at night.
That night, in the dark, I saw the rings of Saturn for the first time. Some how the idiotic social prejudices of high school fell away and I stood in awe of a universe laid out before me in real time. Pictures from the monster telescopes were clearer but this was no picture. It was like I'd run into Marilyn Monroe at the local pizzeria. It was an incarnation of so much I'd only heard, read, or studied about.
The Magi didn't find their emperor: They only found a kid and his parents. But something in that experience brought them down from their perch as owls. They worshiped him with joy. And they joined the conspiracy to give the holy family time to get away. Pretty cool story, unless you count the murder of the innocents.
I started eating lunch with the geeks. I like to think they got something out of my presence. They all went to MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. But I grew to love the stars with them and found an acceptance among them that I'd never found among the cool kids. Who knows? Maybe what those Magi found in that humble house changed them, gave them a new set of eyes to interpret the information of life that was their business. Maybe they gave Joseph and Mary something that helped as they faced the daunting task of raising God's Christ. You see? It takes all kinds, maybe even rabbits.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
The Plunge
Craig Kelly
Acts 19:1-7
I never enjoyed the water. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am an aqua-phobic, since I did learn how to swim in school (can’t say I enjoyed it, though -- GASP! gurgle gurgle). I just never felt drawn to the water. It was appropriate, then, that I lived in North Dakota, a paradise for lovers of terra firma. Flat prairie as far as the eye could see and not a drop of water... perfect. In fact, my hometown boasted to be the geographical center of North America, which meant I was equally far removed from both the Atlantic and the Pacific. That was fine with me.
Of course, you can imagine, then, how thrilled I was to spend a month with my grandfather at his cabin on the shores of Lake Melissa, Minnesota. He had retired from the ministry some years earlier and now spent most of his time with my grandmother on their lakefront sanctuary. The Augusts of my youth were spent with them, keeping them company and helping around the cabin.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my grandparents and enjoyed spending time with them. And Lake Melissa was a beautiful area, filled with all the wonder and beauty that nature had to offer. It was just the "lake" part that didn't sit too well with me. Instead of looking out from my bedroom window and seeing fields of golden wheat stretching on endlessly toward the horizon, I looked out to a lake filled with... well, water. You can only look at water for so long, you know.
If you talked to my grandfather, however, you'd swear we weren't related. The man lived for the water -- swimming, canoeing, fishing, anything water related. Sometimes early in the morning, he would just sit out on the lake in his canoe, looking at the sunrise appearing over the lake, deep in contemplation or prayer or something. Sometimes I even caught him jumping off his canoe and taking a dive into the lake (The first time I saw it I thought he was having a heart attack!) I can still see him all these years later... the man could swim like a fish.
Most of the time, as long as I finished helping my grandmother with chores around the cabin, my grandfather let me have time to myself. So I would often take walks along the shoreline, even walking into the lake, even up to my knees (see? I told you I wasn't an aqua-phobic!). I'd often take a book along to read, maybe Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour. I loved the old Western novels, perhaps in part because they took place on the plains or in the mountains. I've never read too many Westerns that took place on the ocean (I just wasn't into water, okay?). Grandpa often left me a Bible to take with me, but it wasn't my first choice for reading material. I loved God and Jesus and all that, but I didn't need God invading every part of my life. I gave God his due on Sundays and some holidays and that was good enough. I suppose to his credit, Grandpa didn't try to push his faith on me to the point of alienating me. But his love for God was like his love for water -- obvious to everyone who knew him.
So I would occasionally indulge him and take the Bible along on my walks. I would read about the great faith of men and women like Peter, Paul, and Mary (not related to the singing group at all, in case you were wondering). I will admit, there was a part of me that longed for that kind of reckless abandonment to God, the kind that could honestly say, "My life is hidden with Christ in God," or "To live is Christ and to die is gain." But I just didn't know how to get there. I didn't know how to become my grandfather.
Then, when I was sixteen, my grandfather took me out with him on his canoe out onto the lake. I wasn't thrilled about the idea, as usual, but at least there was the canoe between me and dozens of feet of water. I sat rigid in the middle of the canoe, safe and dry. After about five minutes of rowing, Grandpa put his paddle back in the canoe, leaving us floating idly about a hundred yards from shore. We just kept bobbing up and down on the lake, each rise and fall making me more and more uneasy.
"I know you don't like the water, son," Grandpa finally said after a short silence.
"Um, it's okay."
"You're not very convincing," he replied with a smile. "It's okay, you know. Not everyone has to love the water. But I have noticed you wading out into the lake, letting it wash over your feet and legs, even letting it get up to your knees. And I saw that smile. You may like the water more than you think."
I was smiling? Really?
"I don't think so," I said with a chuckle. "The water, swimming -- that's definitely more your thing, Gramps."
He sighed thoughtfully as he looked out over the water. "Yeah, I can't imagine life without the joy of immersing myself in the water. There's a release, a letting go when you let yourself sink into it. You lose control, in a way. Maybe that's why you only like going part way in. You're in the water, supposedly, but you're still the one in control. You get a taste, but that's all."
I couldn't deny what he was saying. Immersed in the water, I couldn't touch the bottom. I couldn't walk where I wanted to like I could on land. While I had some control by swimming, in a way I was almost at the mercy of the water.
"I guess you could be right."
"That's often what our faith is like," Grandpa continued. "We know about Jesus, we accept what he did, and we think it's great, but to actually surrender, to lose control of our lives and futures, giving it all to him -- we're afraid to take that step. We'll only go in to a point and that's it. That way, we control Jesus and not the other way around."
I guess I hadn't really thought about it like that before. But as I considered my own life, I could see that what he was saying was true. I wanted to love God, but I didn't want to surrender. I didn't want to lose control. I wanted God to meet me on my terms.
"Yeah, you're right. I want to love God and follow him, but I want to be in control of my own life. I'm scared to think of where he might take me if I let go."
Grandpa reached over and gently put his hand on my shoulder. "That's when we have to remember that God is loving and merciful, and he wouldn't take us anywhere that wasn't the best for us. He is our loving Father and he will take care of us, always. We just have to trust him, and to do that, we have to let go. We have to lose control and be okay with that. In a way, that's what baptism is about. It's not just a seal of membership in a church. It's a symbol that we have died with Christ and have been raised to new life. As people were lowered into the water, the old life was being buried, and that old life was having it our way, being in control of ourselves. As we rose from the grave, so to speak, we showed that we were reborn with Christ, our old ways were dead, and our lives were surrendered to him and his will. His Spirit filled us and would lead and guide us the rest of our lives."
There was a part of me that yearned for that, even as I feared it.
"So would I just be perfect after that or what?"
Grandpa laughed. "My wife would be the first to tell you that's not true! We still have that sinful nature built into us that wants to seize control away from God, and even as followers of Christ, we still fall short of perfection. But by his grace, Christ's Spirit works on the inside, guiding us into a deeper relationship with him and a greater obedience to his will. But the first step is, we have to let go. We have to surrender."
Even now, I can't say exactly what happened. But I found myself beginning to weep as I yearned for the first time to give God control of my life. Grandpa reached over and hugged me and began to pray. I prayed with him as he prayed that I would give Christ my whole heart and that I would let him lead me.
"We all have to let go, son," he whispered to me.
As we finished, I looked out over the lake with what seemed to be new eyes. I saw the ripples of the water, and instead of foreboding, I felt an odd sense of peace. I looked over at my grandfather, and he just smiled and winked at me as he slowly nodded his head. With unsteady legs, I rose to my feet, looked out over Lake Melissa, and dove into the water.
Craig Kelly is an office assistant living in Lima, Ohio. He received his B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan in 2002. He and his wife, Beth, are actively involved in their church, working both in their church's children's ministry as well as working with low-income youth in their neighborhood. Craig enjoys reading, music, hiking, biking, and indulging in old sci-fi movies.
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 6/8, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
"The Visitor" by Keith Hewitt
"It Takes All Kinds" by C. David McKirachan
"The Plunge" by Craig Kelly
* * * * * * * *
The Visitor
by Keith Hewitt
Isaiah 60:1-6
Was it chance?
A trio of giant planets swept along their orbits as though they followed well-worn grooves in the fabric of space-time, leaving chaos in their wake with each revolution, their ever-shifting position relative to each other and the sun making for a confusing game of tug-of-war with four players instead of two. Farther out -- much farther out, a quarter of the way to the next star -- the tendrils of the giants' gravity dragged through the halo of gas and ice that enveloped the solar system, pulling here, pushing there until they managed to lure a rock out of its age-old path and start bending it toward the inner solar system.
The rock was cold as a tax collector's heart and perhaps twenty miles in diameter -- if something the general shape of a potato could be said to have a diameter. It was mostly accreted dust and carbon, with a thick coating of frozen gas collected over unnumbered years by the slow process of collision within the cloud. Even after its journey started, it plunged through the outer solar system in utter cold and darkness, unnoticed.
Almost a light year sunward, a pharaoh named Ramses clashed with a slave leader, eventually conceding defeat in the face of events he could not understand. The slaves, set free, began to make their way home...
There is no such thing as a straight line in space -- all movement happens along a curved trajectory, or orbit. The orbit is determined by the initial speed of the object and the gravitational effects of all astronomical bodies in its area. Objects close by exert more gravitational force, while objects farther away exert less... but even a lesser exertion of force, over time, can have significant consequences. For an object to take any given path, all of the different forces must line up in just the right way to guide it along the way.
And nothing happens very quickly.
The rock followed a long, eccentric, elliptical orbit. Generation after generation, it followed a path that would eventually lead it past the orbits of all of the gas giants -- including a close encounter with Neptune that gave its trajectory a significant tweak. The sun grew brighter, began to show an actual disk, but the rock still slumbered in the chill of deep space.
Nebuchadnezzar II's armies lay siege to the city of Jerusalem and captured it. There is great bloodshed and Solomon's Temple is destroyed before the leaders of Israel are exiled to Babylon...
As the rock swung in silent orbit, odd things began to happen. Its outer surface began to change as sheets of frozen gas started to flex beneath the uneven warming. Further down, the rock itself began to struggle above near absolute zero. Past the giants, now, its path swung into the asteroid belt -- debris of a failed planet between Mars and Jupiter. Here, no single rock exerted much pull but the cumulative effect of dozens of close approaches made still more changes to its path, bent the visitor's orbit a little more.
A local despot with a talent for picking the winning side -- or throwing himself on the mercy of the winner if he picked the wrong one -- is put in charge of Judea. Eager to please his Roman masters and secure his place near the top of the power structure, he builds a great harbor for Roman shipping in Caesaria, and is quick to obey when asked to do something by his Roman overlords. In order to elevate his status among his own people, he embarks on a tremendous building spree, eventually replacing the ruins of Solomon's Temple with the architectural marvel known as the Second Temple.
The sun is now nearly as large as it is when seen from Earth and the warmth of its rays has wrought great changes to the rock. The surface, once dead and black, is now alive with great geysers, fountains of gas, and dust shooting high into the sky. Some of this mass, ejected from the rock, is blown backward by the invisible solar wind, creating a long, luminous tail to the rock, always pointing straight away from the sun.
For the first time in its history, it is now bright enough to be seen from Earth, a bright point of reflected light with the bright streak of a tail behind it. With each day that passes, as it plunges closer and closer to the sun, its brightness grows and its tail grows longer, fed by explosions of gas and debris on the rock.
Hundreds of thousands of miles sunward, a group of scholars in the land known as Persia look up at the night sky and wonder at the object that rises at sunset and travels to the west overnight, pointing like an arrow. Several scholars of the ancient texts of Israel voice the opinion that it must mark the birth of a new king -- a Messiah. Others suggest that, whatever it is, it must be studied... and so its rising and setting points are calculated and plans are made to follow the path it seems to be tracing.
And at the other end of that path, though they don't yet know it, a young woman is arriving in Bethlehem Ephrata with her husband. Lost in her own thoughts, she looks up at the sky and slowly smiles at what she sees there... For the light has come.
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a local pastor, co-youth leader, former Sunday school teacher, and occasional speaker at Christian events. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife, two children, and assorted dogs and cats.
It Takes All Kinds
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 2:1-12
My wife's boss is a CEO. He works somewhere in the stratosphere. He told her that there are three kinds of people: rabbits, attack dogs, and owls. Rabbits are big on flight and freeze when new or difficult situations arise. Attack dogs live up to their name. They're go-getters, assertive or aggressive, winning is what they're about. Owls fly up to a high perch to get a better view of the entire situation, analyzing, figuring out things before they glide into or away from what's happening. He said he wants 80% attack dogs and 20% owls in his corporation. They rabbits you can have.
The Magi weren't kings. They were in the business of information and used it to affect the more overt centers of power. They had informants everywhere. They were feared because sometimes their subtle influence took the form of assassination. They studied texts, dreams, and read the stars. They were the NSA of the Persian Empire. Kinda creepy, huh? No wonder Herod and all Jerusalem were troubled when they showed up and announced they were looking for a king.
Daniel, as in the lions' den was considered one of the first and greatest Magi. So there may have been Jewish representatives in the bunch that came to Herod. They wouldn't have made such a show unless they were sending a message. They knew Herod's character: paranoid and corrupt. They may have been looking for a successor to the Persian throne in a time of weak kings and instability. The gifts they brought were calling cards to let this newly rising ruler whose star was ascending that they knew his character and potential and doom. They'd read it in the stars. They were owls -- geeks of the first degree.
A friend of mine from high school invited me to come to a meeting of the Astronomy Club. I thought he was nuts. The astronomy club was a dead end of geek-dom. If you hung around with these guys, you were considered less than human. But my friend was vaguely cool and I wasn't on the road to celebrity status, so I figured I could put up with one meeting. Besides, I was a hormone poisoned teenaged boy. My thoughts ran to telescopes and all the things you could see with them at night.
That night, in the dark, I saw the rings of Saturn for the first time. Some how the idiotic social prejudices of high school fell away and I stood in awe of a universe laid out before me in real time. Pictures from the monster telescopes were clearer but this was no picture. It was like I'd run into Marilyn Monroe at the local pizzeria. It was an incarnation of so much I'd only heard, read, or studied about.
The Magi didn't find their emperor: They only found a kid and his parents. But something in that experience brought them down from their perch as owls. They worshiped him with joy. And they joined the conspiracy to give the holy family time to get away. Pretty cool story, unless you count the murder of the innocents.
I started eating lunch with the geeks. I like to think they got something out of my presence. They all went to MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. But I grew to love the stars with them and found an acceptance among them that I'd never found among the cool kids. Who knows? Maybe what those Magi found in that humble house changed them, gave them a new set of eyes to interpret the information of life that was their business. Maybe they gave Joseph and Mary something that helped as they faced the daunting task of raising God's Christ. You see? It takes all kinds, maybe even rabbits.
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
The Plunge
Craig Kelly
Acts 19:1-7
I never enjoyed the water. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I am an aqua-phobic, since I did learn how to swim in school (can’t say I enjoyed it, though -- GASP! gurgle gurgle). I just never felt drawn to the water. It was appropriate, then, that I lived in North Dakota, a paradise for lovers of terra firma. Flat prairie as far as the eye could see and not a drop of water... perfect. In fact, my hometown boasted to be the geographical center of North America, which meant I was equally far removed from both the Atlantic and the Pacific. That was fine with me.
Of course, you can imagine, then, how thrilled I was to spend a month with my grandfather at his cabin on the shores of Lake Melissa, Minnesota. He had retired from the ministry some years earlier and now spent most of his time with my grandmother on their lakefront sanctuary. The Augusts of my youth were spent with them, keeping them company and helping around the cabin.
Don't get me wrong. I loved my grandparents and enjoyed spending time with them. And Lake Melissa was a beautiful area, filled with all the wonder and beauty that nature had to offer. It was just the "lake" part that didn't sit too well with me. Instead of looking out from my bedroom window and seeing fields of golden wheat stretching on endlessly toward the horizon, I looked out to a lake filled with... well, water. You can only look at water for so long, you know.
If you talked to my grandfather, however, you'd swear we weren't related. The man lived for the water -- swimming, canoeing, fishing, anything water related. Sometimes early in the morning, he would just sit out on the lake in his canoe, looking at the sunrise appearing over the lake, deep in contemplation or prayer or something. Sometimes I even caught him jumping off his canoe and taking a dive into the lake (The first time I saw it I thought he was having a heart attack!) I can still see him all these years later... the man could swim like a fish.
Most of the time, as long as I finished helping my grandmother with chores around the cabin, my grandfather let me have time to myself. So I would often take walks along the shoreline, even walking into the lake, even up to my knees (see? I told you I wasn't an aqua-phobic!). I'd often take a book along to read, maybe Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour. I loved the old Western novels, perhaps in part because they took place on the plains or in the mountains. I've never read too many Westerns that took place on the ocean (I just wasn't into water, okay?). Grandpa often left me a Bible to take with me, but it wasn't my first choice for reading material. I loved God and Jesus and all that, but I didn't need God invading every part of my life. I gave God his due on Sundays and some holidays and that was good enough. I suppose to his credit, Grandpa didn't try to push his faith on me to the point of alienating me. But his love for God was like his love for water -- obvious to everyone who knew him.
So I would occasionally indulge him and take the Bible along on my walks. I would read about the great faith of men and women like Peter, Paul, and Mary (not related to the singing group at all, in case you were wondering). I will admit, there was a part of me that longed for that kind of reckless abandonment to God, the kind that could honestly say, "My life is hidden with Christ in God," or "To live is Christ and to die is gain." But I just didn't know how to get there. I didn't know how to become my grandfather.
Then, when I was sixteen, my grandfather took me out with him on his canoe out onto the lake. I wasn't thrilled about the idea, as usual, but at least there was the canoe between me and dozens of feet of water. I sat rigid in the middle of the canoe, safe and dry. After about five minutes of rowing, Grandpa put his paddle back in the canoe, leaving us floating idly about a hundred yards from shore. We just kept bobbing up and down on the lake, each rise and fall making me more and more uneasy.
"I know you don't like the water, son," Grandpa finally said after a short silence.
"Um, it's okay."
"You're not very convincing," he replied with a smile. "It's okay, you know. Not everyone has to love the water. But I have noticed you wading out into the lake, letting it wash over your feet and legs, even letting it get up to your knees. And I saw that smile. You may like the water more than you think."
I was smiling? Really?
"I don't think so," I said with a chuckle. "The water, swimming -- that's definitely more your thing, Gramps."
He sighed thoughtfully as he looked out over the water. "Yeah, I can't imagine life without the joy of immersing myself in the water. There's a release, a letting go when you let yourself sink into it. You lose control, in a way. Maybe that's why you only like going part way in. You're in the water, supposedly, but you're still the one in control. You get a taste, but that's all."
I couldn't deny what he was saying. Immersed in the water, I couldn't touch the bottom. I couldn't walk where I wanted to like I could on land. While I had some control by swimming, in a way I was almost at the mercy of the water.
"I guess you could be right."
"That's often what our faith is like," Grandpa continued. "We know about Jesus, we accept what he did, and we think it's great, but to actually surrender, to lose control of our lives and futures, giving it all to him -- we're afraid to take that step. We'll only go in to a point and that's it. That way, we control Jesus and not the other way around."
I guess I hadn't really thought about it like that before. But as I considered my own life, I could see that what he was saying was true. I wanted to love God, but I didn't want to surrender. I didn't want to lose control. I wanted God to meet me on my terms.
"Yeah, you're right. I want to love God and follow him, but I want to be in control of my own life. I'm scared to think of where he might take me if I let go."
Grandpa reached over and gently put his hand on my shoulder. "That's when we have to remember that God is loving and merciful, and he wouldn't take us anywhere that wasn't the best for us. He is our loving Father and he will take care of us, always. We just have to trust him, and to do that, we have to let go. We have to lose control and be okay with that. In a way, that's what baptism is about. It's not just a seal of membership in a church. It's a symbol that we have died with Christ and have been raised to new life. As people were lowered into the water, the old life was being buried, and that old life was having it our way, being in control of ourselves. As we rose from the grave, so to speak, we showed that we were reborn with Christ, our old ways were dead, and our lives were surrendered to him and his will. His Spirit filled us and would lead and guide us the rest of our lives."
There was a part of me that yearned for that, even as I feared it.
"So would I just be perfect after that or what?"
Grandpa laughed. "My wife would be the first to tell you that's not true! We still have that sinful nature built into us that wants to seize control away from God, and even as followers of Christ, we still fall short of perfection. But by his grace, Christ's Spirit works on the inside, guiding us into a deeper relationship with him and a greater obedience to his will. But the first step is, we have to let go. We have to surrender."
Even now, I can't say exactly what happened. But I found myself beginning to weep as I yearned for the first time to give God control of my life. Grandpa reached over and hugged me and began to pray. I prayed with him as he prayed that I would give Christ my whole heart and that I would let him lead me.
"We all have to let go, son," he whispered to me.
As we finished, I looked out over the lake with what seemed to be new eyes. I saw the ripples of the water, and instead of foreboding, I felt an odd sense of peace. I looked over at my grandfather, and he just smiled and winked at me as he slowly nodded his head. With unsteady legs, I rose to my feet, looked out over Lake Melissa, and dove into the water.
Craig Kelly is an office assistant living in Lima, Ohio. He received his B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan in 2002. He and his wife, Beth, are actively involved in their church, working both in their church's children's ministry as well as working with low-income youth in their neighborhood. Craig enjoys reading, music, hiking, biking, and indulging in old sci-fi movies.
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StoryShare, January 6/8, 2012, issue.
Copyright 2011 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.
