A newly appointed pastor who went to visit the home of a congregation member. Upon arriving there the minister discovered his host was an avid gardener, and was only too delighted to show his pastor around the garden, a magnificent sea of greens, purples, blues, whites, yellows and pinks. Wanting to set the relationship off on a strong, positive note, the pastor said, “Praise God for the beauty of his handiwork”.
But his host replied in a somewhat offended tone, “Now pastor, don’t go giving all the credit to God. You should have seen this garden when the Almighty had it to himself!”
The gardener in fact had very good theology. God has designed the world in such a way that God works in partnership with us, and we with God, to achieve God’s ends.
Oswald Golter was a missionary in northern China during the 1940’s. After ten years service he was returning home. His ship stopped in India, and while waiting for a boat home he found a group of refugees living in a warehouse on the pier. Unwanted by anyone else the refugees were stranded there. Golter went to visit them. As it was Christmas-time wished them a merry Christmas and asked them what they would like for Christmas.
“We’re not Christians,” they said. “We don’t believe in Christmas.”
“I know,” said the missionary, “but what do you want for Christmas?” They described some German pastries they were particularly fond of, and so Oswald Golter cashed in his ticket, used the money to buy baskets and baskets of the pastries, took them to the refugees, and wished them a merry Christmas.
When he later repeated the incident to a class, a student said, “But sir, why did you do that for them? They weren’t Christians. They don’t even believe in Jesus.”
“I know,” he replied, “but I do!”
Nearly 30 years a study was conducted at Princeton University, USA, designed to figure out the conditions under which good people would act for good, or at least be helpful. Two psychologists asked a group of theology students to walk to another building on campus to give a short speech, either about their motives for studying theology or about the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. Meanwhile, the psychologists had arranged for an actor to be stationed on the path between the two buildings, slumped over, coughing and obviously in bad shape. The two experimenters had also led half the students to believe they were late for their speaking appointment, and half that they had ample time.
So, what do you think the responses were? Who was most likely to help: those with the story of the Good Samaritan uppermost in their mind or those thinking about the motives for studying theology? There was a significance difference between groups, but it was not along the lines of speech content. The content of the speech made no difference. About the same number of Good Samaritan speakers and theology motivation students stopped. What did mid make a difference was how rushed the students thought themselves to be. Only 10 percent of those led to believe they were running late stopped to help. Of those told that they had plenty of time, 60 percent stopped to help.
Once upon a time there was a rotund little man with dark brooding eyes who was obsessed with collecting clocks. The world is filled with an almost limitless number of clocks – grandfather clocks, grandmother clocks, cuckoo clocks, alarm clocks, digital clocks, analogue clocks, big clocks, little clocks, medium size clocks. And our rotund little clock collector with the brooding eyes was obsessed with collecting as many as possible. By day he thought about clocks, by night he dreamed about clocks. He visited antique dealers to buy old clocks, perused the shelves of department stores to buy the latest clocks, scoured garage sales to find unwanted clocks.
Soon he had so many clocks he had to build a warehouse to hold them. And each time he found a clock the process was the same. He’d hold the clock, feel the contours, listen for its tick, and then take it to his clock warehouse. When he arrived he’d undo the super heavy duty padlock on the barbed wire fence. Then he’d drive to the front door, look to make sure there was no one else around, and only when he was sure no one was able to peer on his magnificent collection, he’d quickly unlock the security locks, rush into his warehouse, shut the door behind him, and carefully place his latest acquisition in its allocated place.
He was however haunted by each visit to his clock warehouse. It was as though each time he opened and shut those doors someone was whispering in his ear: “Hans of Sweden has more clocks than you…Jillian of London has rarer clocks than you… If only you could get another clock, then you’d be happy.” On occasions the whispering was sinister: “Is your warehouse secure enough? People might steal your clocks…” At times the whispering was indignant “Why should low income earners get a clock concession. Why don’t you get a clock concession too?”
Whenever the whispering started the rotund little clock collector with the brooding eyes was sure he could see someone out of the corner of his eye. But the moment he turned there was nothing.
One day the rotund little clock collector came to his warehouse with his latest prize. He was pleasantly surprised not to hear the whispering inside his head. But his pleasant demeanour ended the moment he opened the warehouse door. There was someone else in the warehouse, right in front of him, a tall, wiry fellow with impish eyes. In his hands the tall, wiry fellow with impish eyes held the most exquisite antique cuckoo clock. It was not one the rotund little clock collector with the brooding eyes had ever seen before. “Who are you?” demanded the clock collector.
“Why I’m a thief” said the tall, wiry fellow with impish eyes. With that he carried the exquisite antique clock to a shelf, placed it gently down and gave it a quick dusting. “Oh, don’t worry, it’s not stolen. It’s mine, and it’s my gift to you.”
As the tall, wiry fellow with impish eyes spoke his voice sounded familiar to the rotund little clock collector with the brooding eyes. Yes, that was it, this was the voice of the whisperer; this was the voice that whispered in his ear each time he unlocked his warehouse.
“A thief! A thief!” cried the rotund clock collector. “But a thief would be removing clocks from my collection, not adding to them! What sort of thief are you?!”
“Oh, I haven’t come to steal your clocks” replied the tall, wiry fellow with the impish eyes. “ You know my voice, don’t you? You’ve heard me many times before…” At this the tall, wiry fellow with the impish eyes leaned in close and whispered “Hans has more clocks, Jillian has rarer clocks, if only you could get another clock, is your warehouse secure? Why do lower income earners get a clock concession?” He continued “I’ve been here every time you’ve visited your warehouse. I haven’t come to steal your clocks my friend. I’ve come to steal your contentment.”
Who or what is the contentment thief for us today?
Source: Scott Higgins
Lawrence was a deacon serving in Rome in the third century when a wave of persecution broke out. When Pope Sixtus and others were killed Lawrence knew it was only a matter of time before they came for him. As keeper of the Church’s goods, he had already been responsible for giving alms to the poor. Now he started giving them even more.
Soon Lawrence was called before Roman officials who demanded he hand over the church’s treasure. He replied that indeed the church was rich and asked for three days to get everything in order.
The days passed and the Roman officials arrived not to a church filled with silver and gold but one filled with the poor, blind, lame and leprous. “Here are the treasures of the church” declared Lawrence.
The official were furious and in the year 258 had Lawrence executed.
Lawrence was right about the treasures of the church was he not?
Sources: wikipedia, americancatholic.org
Alexander III was Tsar of Russia from 1881-1894. His rule was marked by repression, and in particular by persecution of Jews. His wife, Maria Fedorovna, provided a stark contrast, being known for her generosity to those in need. On one occasion her husband had signed an order consigning a prisoner to life in exile. It read simply “Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.” Maria changed that prisoners life by moving the comma in her husband’s order. She altered it to “Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.”
In Christ God has changed the comma that stood against us. From “Pardon impossible, send to Siberia” comes the good news of salvation: “Pardon, impossible to send to Siberia.”
Sources: biography.com and Today in the Word, July 14, 1993.
Charles Plum, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent six years in a Communist prison. He survived that ordeal and now lectures about lessons learned from that experience.
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”
“How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb.
“I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!”
Plumb assured him, “It sure did – if your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform – a Dixie cup hat, a bib in the back, and bell bottom trousers. I wondered how many times I might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said ‘Good morning, how are you,’ or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.”
Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t know.
Now, Plumb asks his audience, “Who’s packing your parachute? Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day.”
Application: pride. Don’t allow your pride to blindfold you to the people who provide the parachutes in your life, and the lives of others.
Application: encouragement, gratitude. Take time out to encourage and thank the people who provide the parachutes in your life.
Application: community, church, spiritual gifts. Charlie Plumb’s experience reminds us that every community needs every person playing their part if it is to function successfully. Some of those parts will be the glamorous roles, like the fighter pilot, while others will be behind the scenes, out of the way and apparently unimportant jobs like parachute packing. But all are vital.
Source: unknown.
Leonardo Da Vinci, the noted Italian artist, painted the Last Supper. It took seven years for him to complete it. The figures representing the twelve Apostles and Christ himself were painted from living persons. The life-model for the painting of the figure of Jesus was chosen first.
When it was decided that Da Vinci would paint this great picture, hundreds and hundreds of young men were carefully viewed in an endeavour to find a face and personality exhibiting innocence and beauty, free from the scars and signs of dissipation caused by sin.
Finally, after weeks of laborious search, a young man nineteen years of age was selected as a model for the portrayal of Christ. For six months Da Vinci worked on the production of this leading character of his famous painting. During the next six years Da Vinci continued his labours on this sublime work of art. One by one fitting persons were chosen to represent each of the eleven Apostles – with space being left for the painting of the figure representing Judas Iscariot as the final task of this masterpiece.
This was the Apostle, you remember, who betrayed his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. For weeks Da Vinci searched for a man with a hard, callous face, with a countenance marked by scars of avarice, deceit, hypocrisy, and crime. A face that would delineate a character who would betray his best friend.
After many discouraging experiences in searching for the type of person required to represent Judas, word came to Da Vinci that a man whose appearance fully met his requirements had been found in a dungeon in Rome, sentenced to die for a life of crime and murder. Da Vinci made the trip to Rome at once, and this man was brought out from his imprisonment in the dungeon and led out into the light of the sun. There Da Vinci saw before him a dark, swarthy man his long shaggy and unkempt hair sprawled over his face, which betrayed a character of viciousness and complete ruin. At last the famous painter had found the person he wanted to represent the character of Judas in his painting. By special permission from the king, this prisoner was carried to Milan where the picture was being painted. For months he sat before Da Vinci at appointed hours each day as the gifted artist diligently continued his task of transmitting, to his painting, this base character representing the traitor and betrayer of our Saviour.
As he finished his last stroke, he turned to the guards and said, I have finished. You may take the prisoner away. As the guards were leading their prisoner away, he suddenly broke loose from their control and rushed up to Da Vinci, crying as he did so, “Da Vinci, look at me. Do you not know who I am?” Da Vinci, with the trained eyes of a great character student, carefully scrutinized the man upon whose face he had constantly gazed for six months and replied, “No, I have never seen you in my life until you were brought before me out of the dungeon in Rome.”
Then, lifting his eyes toward heaven, the prisoner said, “Oh God, have I fallen so low?” Then turning his face to the painter he cried, “Leonardo Da Vinci, look at me again for I am the same man you painted just seven years ago as the figure of Christ.”
Source: Unknown.
Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini is thought by many to have been history’s greatest exponent of his art. As he swept through Europe in the early 1800’s his fame was something like that of Beatlemania! His skills were so great that it was whispered he gained his ability from a pact with the devil.
It is said that one evening Paganini was performing before a packed house. As he embarked on the final piece one of the strings on his violin snapped. Undeterred Paganini kept playing. A few moments later, a second string snapped. Again Paganini kept going, now reduced to playing a classical masterpiece on just two strings. And then the unbelievable – a third string snapped. Yet Paganini kept going, finishing the piece on just one string. So brilliant was his performance that the crowd rose to their feet to give him a standing ovation.
Yet Paginini was not finished. There was the encore to come. Raising his violin above his head Paginini called to the audience “Paganini, and one string!” With that the orchestra struck up and Paginini completed his encore on just one string.
Application: Paginini was playing a magnificent but eventually flawed violin that night. Yet even with three strings broken the master musician was able to extract beautiful music from it. You and I are like flawed instruments in the hand of God, yet no matter how flawed and broken, God is still able to weave beautiful, graceful things through us when we give ourselves to serving him and others.
Source: Information from Paginini website and “Sermon Notes”
A mother, wishing to encourage her young son’s progress at the piano bought tickets for a performance by Ignace Paderewski, the famous Polish concert pianist. When the night arrived they found their seats near the front of the concert hall and eyed the majestic Steinway waiting on stage.
Soon the mother found a friend to talk to and the boy slipped away. When eight o’clock arrived, the spotlights came on, the audience quieted, and only then did they notice the boy up on the piano stool, innocently picking out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
His mother gasped, but before she could retrieve her son, the master appeared on stage and quickly moved to the piano.
“Don’t quit – keep playing” he whispered to the boy. Leaning over, Paderweski reached down with his left hand and began filling in a bass part. Soon his right arm reached around the other side, encircling the child, to add a running obligato. Together the old master and the young novice held the crowd mesmerised.
In our lives, unpolished though we may be, it is the Master who surrounds us and whispers in our ear, time and again, “Don’t quit – keep playing”. And as we do he augments and supplements until a work of amazing beauty is created.
Source: Leadership Magazine, Spring 1983
During the time of Napoleon there was a brilliant French mathematician by the name of Pierre Simon de Laplace. Laplace was convinced that the universe operated like a giant machine and that if we had enough knowledge we could predict everything that would happen in the future. He expressed this belief in a book called Philosophical Essays on Probabilities and presented it to Napoleon. Napoleon said to him, “M. Laplace, they tell me that you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never mentioned its Creator” to which Laplace replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”
Source: Story and citation found in Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present and Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion
Sir Winston Churchill took three years getting through eighth grade because he had trouble learning English. It seems ironic that years later Oxford University asked him to address its commencement exercises.
He arrived with his usual props. A cigar, a cane and a top hat accompanied Churchill wherever he went. As Churchill approached the podium, the crowd rose in appreciative applause. With unmatched dignity, he settled the crowd and stood confident before his admirers. Removing the cigar and carefully placing the top hat on the podium, Churchill gazed at his waiting audience. Authority rang in Churchill’s voice as he shouted, “Never give up!”
Several seconds passed before he rose to his toes and repeated: “Never give up!” His words thundered in their ears. There was a deafening silence as Churchill reached for his hat and cigar, steadied himself with his cane and left the platform. His commencement address was finished.
The great American civil rights leader Martin Luther King was a person with tremendous courage. He endured vilification, beatings, imprisonments, death threats, his house was firebombed, and as we all know, he eventually was assassinated.
So what kept him going? It was his strong sense of God’s call upon his life. King was just 26 years old when he was appointed leader of the civil rights campaign in Montgomery, Alabama. Apart from terrifying threats from the Ku Klux Klan, King was harassed by police. Arrested for driving 5 miles per hour over the speed limit he was given his first stint in jail. The night after his release he was at home when the phone rang. “Nigger”, said a menacing voice on the other end, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”
King was unnerved and very afraid – for himself, for his wife and for his little children. Shortly after the phone call he sat at his kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee. “And I sat at that table” he said, “thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me at any minute. And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep…And I got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I was weak…
And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I will never forget it…I said, ‘Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage…And it seemed to me at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’…I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone.. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”
Three nights later the menacing threat made in the phone call came true: a bomb exploded on the front verandah of the King home. Thankfully no one was hurt. But King was able to get through it: “My religious experience a few nights before had given me strength to face it.” Time and again throughout his ministry Martin Luther King returned to that experience to strengthen him as he faced terrible difficulties.
Memorandum
TO:
Jesus, Son of Joseph
Woodcrafter Carpenter Shop
Nazareth
FROM:
Jordan Management Consultants
Jerusalem
Dear Sir:
Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for management positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests; we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant.
It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.
Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale.
We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings, and they both registered a high score on the manic depressive scale.
One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man. All of the other profiles are self-explanatory.
We wish you every success in your new venture.
Sincerely yours,
Jordan Management Consultants.
here was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter how many times you say ‘I’m sorry’, the wound is still there.”
Alternate Application – gossip. When telling the story substitute “gossip” for “anger”, but with the same result – the wounds are still there.
Source: unknown.
Chris Hedges is a war correspondent. He has spent most of his adult life covering conflicts – in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Palestine, Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, the Punjab, Romania, Kuwait, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo. During these years he has had some hair-raising experiences. “I have been in ambushes on desolate stretches of Central American roads, shot at in the marshes of southern Iraq, imprisoned in Sudan, beaten by Saudi military police, deported from Libya and Iran, captured and held prisoner for a week by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite rebellion following the Gulf War, strafed by MIG-21s in Bosnia, fired upon by Serb snipers and shelled for days in Sarajevo…” he writes.
Through all this Hedges has gained an insight into war few of us ever will, and it disgust him. This is what he had to say in a 2003 article for The Nation. “War itself is venal, dirty, confusing and perhaps the most potent narcotic invented by humankind. Modern industrial warfare means that most of those who are killed never see their attackers. There is nothing glorious or gallant about it. If we saw what wounds did to bodies, how killing is far more like butchering an animal than the clean and neat Hollywood deaths on the screen, it would turn our stomachs. If we saw how war turns young people into intoxicated killers, how it gives soldiers a license to destroy not only things but other human beings, and if we saw the perverse thrill such destruction brings, we would be horrified and frightened. If we understood that combat is often a constant battle with a consuming fear we have perhaps never known, a battle that we often lose, we would find the abstract words of war–glory, honor and patriotism–not only hollow but obscene. If we saw the deep psychological scars of slaughter, the way it maims and stunts those who participate in war for the rest of their lives, we would keep our children away. Indeed, it would be hard to wage war. For war, when we confront it truthfully, exposes the darkness within all of us.”
Source: “The Press and the Myths of War”, The Nation April 3, 2003
In September 1808 an American sailing ship, The Topaz was halfway between New Zealand and South America when it came across an uncharted island. Although it was not safe to land the Captain of The Topaz saw a canoe making its way out from the shore toward his ship. To Captain Folger’s astonishment the two youths dressed in native clothing spoke perfect English and claimed to be Englishmen. Before long Folger had unravelled a mystery that had intrigued the world for two decades.
Thirty years before Folger came across Pitcairn island a sailor by the name of Fletcher Christian had led perhaps the most famous mutiny in history – the mutiny on The Bounty. Casting Captain Bligh and his officers adrift in a longboat the mutineers set sail for the tropical paradise Tahiti. Against astonishing odds William Bligh found his way back to England and the British Government dispatched a warship to hunt down the mutineers. When the warship arrived at Tahiti some of the mutineers were captured, but seven of them seemed to have disappeared into thin air.
Those seven knew the British would come after them and set sail from Tahiti with six Polynesian men and twelve Tahitian women they kidnapped. Along the way they picked up another two Polynesian men. Eventually they came to the uncharted Pitcairn island, burned The Bounty to avoid detection, and these fifteen men and twelve women set about making this tiny island their home. Their story is not a pretty one. By the time Captain Folger discovered them in 1808 twelve of the fifteen men had been murdered, one had committed suicide, and one had died of natural causes. Three of the women were also dead.
Soon after the mutineers and their companions arrived at Pitcairn the white men assumed privileged positions and sexual jealousies raged. Coupled with alcohol made from the root of the Ti plant violence and murder exploded on the island.
Yet when Captain Folger arrived in 1808 he found a thriving, peaceful and virtuous community made up of the surviving mutineer, the surviving women and the children who had been born during the community’s short and previously violent life. Indeed, over coming years visitors to the island were struck by how idyllic the community was. What had brought about such change?
Historians debate the causes, but it seems that a large part at least was the conversion of the Pitcairners to Christianity. The last surviving European, John Adams, had assumed the role of chief, and had been converted himself after learning to read the Bible and Prayer Book that had been taken from The Bounty before it was destroyed. Adams set about converting the others and soon after the islanders were living by the principles they found laid down in the Bible. The result was by no means a perfect community, but it was a community marked by peace and the desire to live virtuous lives.
Source: Reported in Trevor Lummis Life and Death in Eden. Pitcairn Island and The Bounty Mutineers (Phoenix 1997) and Christianity Today August 7, 2000
The movie Mr Holland’s Opus tells the story of a musician who struggles to find success in life. Mr Holland dreams of composing a magnificent symphony that will be played by orchestras across the world. The problem is the real world presents him with bills that have to be paid. He takes a job as a high school music teacher, figuring that after four years of teaching he’ll have saved enough to quit and do nothing but compose music. He absolutely hates teaching, but when his wife unexpectedly falls pregnant the savings earmarked for a life of composing have to be sacrificed to a mortgage. Throughout the course of the movie we see a remarkable change in Mr Holland. He comes to love teaching. He finds ways to inspire his students to love music, but not only that, to find their self confidence. This becomes his passion and his source of fulfilment. Thirty years pass, Mr Holland is about to retire, and his dream of becoming a famous composer remains unfulfilled. On his final day as a teacher he packs up his desk, and heads for his car. On the way he hears music coming from the auditorium. Intrigued he goes to see what’s happening. He opens the door to find the auditorium filled with his students from the past 30 years. They’re playing a piece of music he wrote. It’s a concert in his honour. One of Mr Holland’s former students delivers a speech:
“Mr Holland had a profound influence in my own life, yet I get the feeling that he considers the greater part of his own life misspent. Rumour had it that he was always working on that symphony of his, and this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr Holland isn’t rich, and he isn’t famous, at least not outside of our own little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. And he would be wrong. Because I think he has achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched. And each one of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. And we are the music of your life.”
There was once an old stone monastery tucked away in the middle of a picturesque forest. For many years people would make the significant detour required to seek out this monastery. The peaceful spirit of the place was healing for the soul.
In recent years however fewer and fewer people were making their way to the monastery. The monks had grown jealous and petty in their relationships with one another, and the animosity was felt by those who visited.
The Abbot of the monastery was distressed by what was happening, and poured out his heart to his good friend Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a wise old Jewish rabbi. Having heard the Abbot’s tale of woe he asked if he could offer a suggestion. “Please do” responded the Abbot. “Anything you can offer.”
Jeremiah said that he had received a vision, an important vision, and the vision was this: the messiah was among the ranks of the monks. The Abbot was flabbergasted. One among his own was the Messiah! Who could it be? He knew it wasn’t himself, but who? He raced back to the monastery and shared his exciting news with his fellow monks.
The monks grew silent as they looked into each other’s faces. Was this one the Messiah?
From that day on the mood in the monastery changed. Joseph and Ivan started talking again, neither wanting to be guilty of slighting the Messiah. Pierre and Naibu left behind their frosty anger and sought out each other’s forgiveness. The monks began serving each other, looking out for opportunities to assist, seeking healing and forgiveness where offence had been given.
As one traveler, then another, found their way to the monastery word soon spread about the remarkable spirit of the place. People once again took the journey to the monastery and found themselves renewed and transformed. All because those monks knew the Messiah was among them.
Sometimes we humans can be very cruel. A few years ago Professor David Shepherd of Southeastern Louisiana University conducted an experiment that showed just how cruel. Shepherd and his colleagues placed eight fake turtles and snakes at various points along a road, directly in the path of oncoming vehicles. At other places they put eight fake turtles and snakes way off the side of the road. To hit these snakes and turtles drivers would have to deliberately make the effort.
They found that 87% of drivers went out of their way to avoid hitting any of the snakes and turtles. 7% didn’t notice the fakes and so unintentionally ran them over. But 6% of drivers had a mean streak. They deliberately went out of their way to run over even the snakes and turtles off the side of the road. Shepherd reported that one truck driver crossed from the centre lane, went into the opposite lane of traffic and onto the shoulder of the road in order to rundown a turtle.
It’s amazing how we can get satisfaction out of cruelty, but most of us manage it at some time, whether it be the harsh words we use on someone, the gossip we offer, laughing at someone’s weakness, or mean spirited rejection of others.
Source: Scientific information from Karl Kruszelnicki’s New Moments in Science #3.
In the year 156 an 86 year old man was brought before a Roman official and asked to renounce his atheism. He was no atheist by our standards. Rather he was the devout Christian bishop Polycarp. To the Romans however he was an atheist, for he refused to worship the emperor as a god along with the other gods of Rome.
Polycarp knew denial would mean a painful death – either being thrown into the arena with a wild animal or burned alive on a pyre. Three times he was questioned, three times invited to renounce his “atheism”, but no renunciation of Christ would he make. “Swear and I release; curse Christ” urged the Roman official, to which Polycarp replied “Eighty-six years have I served him (Christ), and he has done me no wrong: how then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”
Polycarp was not spared. A pyre was built and he was burned alive, but his words echo down through time to us: “Eighty-six years have I served him (Christ), and he has done me no wrong: how then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”
Source: Based on a text from Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers cited in A New Eusebius. Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337.
He was in the first third grade class I taught at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minneapolis. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, but had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful.
Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving – “Thank you for correcting me, Sister!” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.
One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice-teacher’s mistake. I looked at him and said, “If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!”
It wasn’t ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, “Mark is talking again.” I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.
I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened my drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Sister.”
At the end of the year I was asked to teach junior-high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instructions in the “new math,” he did not talk as much in ninth grade as he had in the third.
One Friday, things just didn’t feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves – and edgy with one another. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of he class period to finish the assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed me the papers. Charlie smiled. Marked said, “Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend.”
That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday I gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. “Really?” I heard whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone!” “I didn’t know others liked me so much!” No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.
That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked me the usual questions about the trip – the weather, my experiences in general. There was a light lull in the conversation. Mother gave Dad a side-ways glance and simply says, “Dad?” My father cleared his throat as he usually did before something important. “The Eklunds called last night,” he began. “Really?” I said. “I haven’t heard from them in years. I wonder how Mark is.”
Dad responded quietly. “Mark was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend.” To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark.
I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you would talk to me. The church was packed with Mark’s friends. Chuck’s sister sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Why did it have to rain on the day of the funeral? It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water.
I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who had acted as pallbearer came up to me. “Were you Mark’s math teacher?” he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked about you a lot,” he said.
After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chucks farmhouse for lunch. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. “We want to show you something,” his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.”
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.”
Mark’s classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. It’s in the top drawer of my desk at home.” Chuck’s wife said, “Chuck asked me to put this in our wedding album.” “I have mine too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.” Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. “I carry this with me at all times,” Vicki said without batting an eyelash. “I think we all saved our lists.”
That’s when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.
Source: Sister Helen P. Mrosia.
In June 1973, Marietta Jaeger went camping in Badlands National Park with her husband, Bill, and their five children. As they slept in their tents one night, their seven year-old daughter, Susie, was kidnapped. Marietta suffered all the pain and emotional turmoil you would expect in such a nightmarish situation. In the days immediately following the abduction, she was surrounded by people who talked about the kidnapper in venomous terms, routinely characterizing him as inhuman (even though his identity and gender were still a mystery).
Despite this climate of anger and vengeance, something inside Marietta began to shift as the days of waiting turned into weeks. As reported in the May/June 1998 issue of Health Magazine, Marietta heard a voice. “What Marietta heard was God telling her, ‘I don’t want you to feel this way.’ As she pondered the message, the weight on her chest seemed to lift and her stomach relaxed. She fell into the first deep sleep since Susie vanished.” This was the beginning of her commitment to releasing her anger and finding a path to forgiveness.
One year after the abduction the kidnapper called Marietta’s home. Because she had used the intervening months praying for forgiveness – searching within for the strength to find the humanity buried somewhere within the kidnapper – she was able to convey genuine empathy as she spoke with him. Despite the obvious risks to the kidnapper, Marietta kept him on the phone for more than an hour, ultimately providing the FBI with enough information to locate and capture him. His name was David Meirhofer. He had abducted and killed other children. In FBI custody, he confessed to murdering Susie Jaeger a week after taking her from the family’s tent. A few hours later, he committed suicide.
Given Meirhofer’s horrific revelation, it would be understandable for Marietta to abandon the course of forgiveness. Her husband never let go of his anger and he died of a heart attack at 56 after suffering for years with bleeding ulcers, but Marietta stayed the course. She began travelling around the country to speak with others about forgiveness, sharing her experience. She even befriended the kidnapper’s mother, Eleanor Huckert. “She and Huckert went together to visit the graves of their children,” the Health article concludes. “Afterward, the two mothers sat at the Huckerts’ dining room table sipping coffee and thumbing through old scrapbooks. There was David on the front porch – a rosy-cheeked little boy, scrubbed and eager to set out for his first day of school. As she studied the smiling boy in the snapshot, Marietta felt that her struggle to invest the faceless criminal with humanity was complete. ‘If you remain vindictive, you give the offender another victim,’ she says. ‘Anger, hatred, and resentment would have taken my life as surely as Susie’s life was taken.'”
Source: reported by The Forgiveness Project
Marco Polo is one of the most famed explorers of history. It seems he inherited the travel bug from his father. In 1260, when Marco polo was 6, his father and uncle traveled to Mongolia (part of modern day China). When they arrived there the Mongol emperor revealed an interest in Christianity. He asked the brothers to take a letter to the Pope requesting as many as 100 wise men to spread the Gospel among his subjects.
Three years later the brothers arrived home, and two years later set out on their return trek. Did they take the 100 wise men with them? No. Just two friars, for this was all the church felt they could spare. And even those two didn’t make it, turning back shortly into their journey.
What a tragedy! Imagine if the Kublai’s request had been fulfilled. Perhaps the whole history of China may have been changed.
Source: Information found in National Geographic, May 2001.
Map making goes by the name of cartography. It may not sound terribly interesting, but in 1815 a cartographer by the name of William Smith produced a map that changed the world. William Smith was an English orphan who grew up in poverty. He became a surveyor and during his time surveying the countryside he came to realise something very important about the earth beneath his feet. First he discovered that rocks could be dated by the fossils found in them. Find the same type of fossils in two rocks separated by distance and it’s probably they come from the same era. Second, he learned that the rock layers tend to be arranged in a consistent pattern. Armed with that knowledge Smith produced a geological map of England, Scotland and Wales. And that map changed the world.
How you might ask? Well for the first time Smith’s map allowed people to predict what lay beneath the ground. Prior to Smith’s map if you wanted to find gold or coal or gas or any other natural resource you had to scout the surface for some sign of them – a glint of gold or an outcropping of coal. But with Smith’s map you could look for particular rock types and know what likely lay beneath them and within them. His map allowed us to see below the surface and to uncover the depths. And so the electricity we gain from coal, the gas that fires our stoves, the gold we wear on chains around our necks, and much much more are possible because William Smith mad a map in 1815.
Smith’s story reminds us of the need to be cartographers of life. Before Smith we barely scratched the surface of the earth, but after Smith we could plumb the depths. Similarly, we could all do with a life map, a mental map that enables us to do more than scratch the surface of life, but to experience the depths of human possibility. For Christians Jesus is the Cartographer of Life, the one who provides us with a map of realities that we can barely see – of God, truth and love.
Alternate Application: The Scriptures are a life-map God has provided for us. They point us to realities about God and life that we would otherwise not be able to see, and enable us to live life to its fullest.
Source: William Smith’s story is reported in Simon Wichester, The Map That Changed the World (HarperCollins, 2001)
