Whatever You Ask?
Stories
Contents
“Whatever You Ask?” by Frank Ramirez
“I Surrender All” by John Sumwalt
Whatever You Ask?
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 10:35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” (v. 35)
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) didn’t feel like taking over his father’s bakery in Chicago when he grew up, so he went on to live his own crazy life. He’s best known for children’s books, but he was a cartoonist, a songwriter, musician, performer, and playwright, among many other things. He won two Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe, was nominated for an Oscar, and his books, translated into more than twenty-five languages, sold more than 20 million copies. Almost no one knows he wrote Johnny Cash’s hit “A Boy Named Sue.” But almost everyone has heard of his runaway bestselling children’s book, The Giving Tree.
The plot is simple. A boy and an apple tree enjoy spending time together. The boy plays on the tree, eats apples, and spends time with the tree. But as the boy grows his interest wanes and the tree is ignored. Over time the tree offers the young man all the apples to sell, gives the adult man her branches to make a house, and finally gives her tree trunk to the older man to make a boat to sail away. The tree remains sad, lonely, and neglected. One senses that the boy’s life, which seems pretty selfish, is a failure. At last, the sad and embittered old man returns, and all the tree can offer is a stump to sit on. The boy does so, and the tree is happy.
The book remains intensely popular. People give it to moms for a gift before the birth of their first child. Moms and children cherish the book as they grow older together. Isn’t the willingness to give one’s all the sign of real love?
Others are not so sure. In a blog post “Why I Hate The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” Jennifer Ziegler wrote “…I’m pretty sure this tree suffers from codependency.” She defines this as a situation in which a pathological person plagued either by drug addiction or narcissism, manipulates another who has a low sense of worth and is too preoccupied with what others need.
Ziegler concludes, ”I hate this book because it’s not a story of love and friendship. It’s not even a story about giving, as the title implies. The Giving Tree is actually a really sick tale of a horribly dysfunctional relationship. For kids.” She concludes that she’d rather her own kids explore dysfunctional relationships “…the old-fashioned way: by watching inappropriate movies and television shows, and by watching the example set by their dad and me.”
Ruth Margalit revisited the book, which she’d read when she was much younger, in The Giving Tree at Fifty: Sadder Than I Remembered,” which appeared on The New Yorker website in 2014. Reviewing the author’s career and the rest of his creative output, for which she seems to have had a good deal of admiration, she admits she has qualms returning to this particular book. In her article she quotes William Cole, from Simon & Schuster, who rejected the book because “My interpretation is that this is one dum-dum of a tree, giving everything and expecting nothing in return.” One author she quoted worried that when, as often happens, this book is given as a gift, new mothers can get the impression that this is how they’re supposed to act.
There’s no question Silverstein was a great writer. His book Where the Sidewalk Ends makes it clear he understands what the world looks like from a child’s perspective. Silverstein himself, avoiding the limelight for much of his life, had little to say about The Giving Tree, although one time he was quoted, “It’s about a boy and a tree. It has a pretty sad ending.”
As I reflected on this book, I thought of three things. First, I’ve often counseled people in toxic relationships with toxic people, that it’s not their job to go down with the ship.
Second, when they share the emergency instructions on a plane before takeoff, they tell you counterintuitively than if the cabin loses pressure and the face masks drop with oxygen that you must take care of yourself first before you take care of a child or fellow passenger! People resist this, but if you pass out and your loved ones then pass out, you’ll both die.
But then I ask myself, “Wait a minute, isn’t what we preach that Jesus gave all. Jesus died on the cross to save us. So, isn’t this story kind of a parable about the great love Jesus has and how we should be prepared to do the same for others?”
Maybe. But while Jesus gave his all for us on the cross, he did not give the disciples everything they asked, which they expected him to do without being told first what it was. What parent would have said yes if their child said, “I want you to give me whatever I ask without me telling you first.” On this occasion Jesus took the opportunity to tell his followers some hard truth about what it takes to become real disciples, and what the gospel really means, as we will see when we look more closely into this scripture.
* * *
I Surrender All
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c
“O LORD, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.” (Psalm 104:24)
"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." (Hebrews 5:7)
I grew up singing gospel hymns at our little church in Loyd, Wisconsin, the village just down the road from our family farm. The tunes and words of many of those old favorites were imprinted on my soul from an early age. And though my understanding of God and Jesus has found expression in broader ways over the years, I still find myself singing 'Tell Me the Stories of Jesus," "Blessed Assurance," "Love Lifted Me," and a particular favorite, "I Surrender All".
Recently, as I have struggled to overcome chronic lyme disease, the surrender hymn came into my mind in a powerful way. What I thought was outdated theology may hold the key to the spiritual transformation that I have come to believe is necessary in any healing process.
Caroline Myss, author of Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason, noticed that the people who were being healed in her seminars all had one thing in common, total surrender to God: "...healing is the result of a mystical act of surrender..." Myss writes, "The people I know who have experienced healings told me that they were able to detach from their pre-existing images of God. Indeed, they managed to detach from everything---their wounds, their need to be right, their need to win, their need to know why things happened as they did in their lives. In doing so, they discovered that all they really surrendered was their fear, their darkness---and much to their great awe, their disease."
Myss tells about a woman who had cancer in her back and was in continual, debilitating pain. She wrote to Caroline after one of her healing seminars: "I said the prayer, 'Now God. I release the whole of my life to you...' Then she explained, "I felt as if I went into free fall, as if I owned nothing. I felt as if I had no past and nothing to lose. I had only life to gain. I fell asleep after that prayer and when I woke up, half my pain was gone..." Within a few days she was pain free. Her doctor ran tests that showed that the cancer was no longer there.
The composer, Judson W. Van DeVenter, wrote "I Surrender All" after a five-year struggle with a call to full time ministry. He was a very successful as a teacher and high school art administrator. He also played thirteen instruments and was a leader in his church's music ministry. It was during a church music event that he was conducting in 1896 that he said, "...he finally surrendered his desires completely to God and made the decision to become a full-time evangelist." The song was birthed out of that transforming experience.
Winfield S. Weeden (1847-1908) put the words of "I Surrender All" to music and loved the song so much that he had the lyrics inscribed on his tombstone.
Whenever I hear that sweet melody, I am transported back to the little church in Loyd and I can hear my father's resonate tenor leading out on the refrain: "All to thee my blessed Savior, I surrender all."
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 10, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
“Whatever You Ask?” by Frank Ramirez
“I Surrender All” by John Sumwalt
Whatever You Ask?
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 10:35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” (v. 35)
Shel Silverstein (1930-1999) didn’t feel like taking over his father’s bakery in Chicago when he grew up, so he went on to live his own crazy life. He’s best known for children’s books, but he was a cartoonist, a songwriter, musician, performer, and playwright, among many other things. He won two Grammy Awards and a Golden Globe, was nominated for an Oscar, and his books, translated into more than twenty-five languages, sold more than 20 million copies. Almost no one knows he wrote Johnny Cash’s hit “A Boy Named Sue.” But almost everyone has heard of his runaway bestselling children’s book, The Giving Tree.
The plot is simple. A boy and an apple tree enjoy spending time together. The boy plays on the tree, eats apples, and spends time with the tree. But as the boy grows his interest wanes and the tree is ignored. Over time the tree offers the young man all the apples to sell, gives the adult man her branches to make a house, and finally gives her tree trunk to the older man to make a boat to sail away. The tree remains sad, lonely, and neglected. One senses that the boy’s life, which seems pretty selfish, is a failure. At last, the sad and embittered old man returns, and all the tree can offer is a stump to sit on. The boy does so, and the tree is happy.
The book remains intensely popular. People give it to moms for a gift before the birth of their first child. Moms and children cherish the book as they grow older together. Isn’t the willingness to give one’s all the sign of real love?
Others are not so sure. In a blog post “Why I Hate The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein,” Jennifer Ziegler wrote “…I’m pretty sure this tree suffers from codependency.” She defines this as a situation in which a pathological person plagued either by drug addiction or narcissism, manipulates another who has a low sense of worth and is too preoccupied with what others need.
Ziegler concludes, ”I hate this book because it’s not a story of love and friendship. It’s not even a story about giving, as the title implies. The Giving Tree is actually a really sick tale of a horribly dysfunctional relationship. For kids.” She concludes that she’d rather her own kids explore dysfunctional relationships “…the old-fashioned way: by watching inappropriate movies and television shows, and by watching the example set by their dad and me.”
Ruth Margalit revisited the book, which she’d read when she was much younger, in The Giving Tree at Fifty: Sadder Than I Remembered,” which appeared on The New Yorker website in 2014. Reviewing the author’s career and the rest of his creative output, for which she seems to have had a good deal of admiration, she admits she has qualms returning to this particular book. In her article she quotes William Cole, from Simon & Schuster, who rejected the book because “My interpretation is that this is one dum-dum of a tree, giving everything and expecting nothing in return.” One author she quoted worried that when, as often happens, this book is given as a gift, new mothers can get the impression that this is how they’re supposed to act.
There’s no question Silverstein was a great writer. His book Where the Sidewalk Ends makes it clear he understands what the world looks like from a child’s perspective. Silverstein himself, avoiding the limelight for much of his life, had little to say about The Giving Tree, although one time he was quoted, “It’s about a boy and a tree. It has a pretty sad ending.”
As I reflected on this book, I thought of three things. First, I’ve often counseled people in toxic relationships with toxic people, that it’s not their job to go down with the ship.
Second, when they share the emergency instructions on a plane before takeoff, they tell you counterintuitively than if the cabin loses pressure and the face masks drop with oxygen that you must take care of yourself first before you take care of a child or fellow passenger! People resist this, but if you pass out and your loved ones then pass out, you’ll both die.
But then I ask myself, “Wait a minute, isn’t what we preach that Jesus gave all. Jesus died on the cross to save us. So, isn’t this story kind of a parable about the great love Jesus has and how we should be prepared to do the same for others?”
Maybe. But while Jesus gave his all for us on the cross, he did not give the disciples everything they asked, which they expected him to do without being told first what it was. What parent would have said yes if their child said, “I want you to give me whatever I ask without me telling you first.” On this occasion Jesus took the opportunity to tell his followers some hard truth about what it takes to become real disciples, and what the gospel really means, as we will see when we look more closely into this scripture.
* * *
I Surrender All
by John Sumwalt
Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c
“O LORD, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.” (Psalm 104:24)
"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." (Hebrews 5:7)
I grew up singing gospel hymns at our little church in Loyd, Wisconsin, the village just down the road from our family farm. The tunes and words of many of those old favorites were imprinted on my soul from an early age. And though my understanding of God and Jesus has found expression in broader ways over the years, I still find myself singing 'Tell Me the Stories of Jesus," "Blessed Assurance," "Love Lifted Me," and a particular favorite, "I Surrender All".
Recently, as I have struggled to overcome chronic lyme disease, the surrender hymn came into my mind in a powerful way. What I thought was outdated theology may hold the key to the spiritual transformation that I have come to believe is necessary in any healing process.
Caroline Myss, author of Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason, noticed that the people who were being healed in her seminars all had one thing in common, total surrender to God: "...healing is the result of a mystical act of surrender..." Myss writes, "The people I know who have experienced healings told me that they were able to detach from their pre-existing images of God. Indeed, they managed to detach from everything---their wounds, their need to be right, their need to win, their need to know why things happened as they did in their lives. In doing so, they discovered that all they really surrendered was their fear, their darkness---and much to their great awe, their disease."
Myss tells about a woman who had cancer in her back and was in continual, debilitating pain. She wrote to Caroline after one of her healing seminars: "I said the prayer, 'Now God. I release the whole of my life to you...' Then she explained, "I felt as if I went into free fall, as if I owned nothing. I felt as if I had no past and nothing to lose. I had only life to gain. I fell asleep after that prayer and when I woke up, half my pain was gone..." Within a few days she was pain free. Her doctor ran tests that showed that the cancer was no longer there.
The composer, Judson W. Van DeVenter, wrote "I Surrender All" after a five-year struggle with a call to full time ministry. He was a very successful as a teacher and high school art administrator. He also played thirteen instruments and was a leader in his church's music ministry. It was during a church music event that he was conducting in 1896 that he said, "...he finally surrendered his desires completely to God and made the decision to become a full-time evangelist." The song was birthed out of that transforming experience.
Winfield S. Weeden (1847-1908) put the words of "I Surrender All" to music and loved the song so much that he had the lyrics inscribed on his tombstone.
Whenever I hear that sweet melody, I am transported back to the little church in Loyd and I can hear my father's resonate tenor leading out on the refrain: "All to thee my blessed Savior, I surrender all."
*****************************************
StoryShare, October 10, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 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.
