All Stories Stories

Spiderwebs

There’s a spider that lives in my carport. I see it each night when I put the garbage out, and I sometimes find myself stopping and admiring. Every night my carport spider builds a web. When it’s finished the web will resemble a large wheel. But it’s a laborious process. First my spider creates a framework, then he slowly and patiently builds a series of lines out from the web centre, like the spokes on a wheel. To do this he must crawl along a web line already in place, spinning a new line out behind him. Once he’s reached the end of the line he crawls down the carport strut and pulls his fresh line taut, then crawls back to the middle to start the process over again.

Once the spokes are finished it’s time to create the series of circles that fit over it. Starting from the middle, crawling from spoke to spoke, the spider builds his first circle. Then another, and another and another. He stops at each spoke to secure the circle to it, until finally his web is finished.

Then my spider crawls off to the side and waits for his prey to fly into the web. I don’t know what happens throughout the night, but by morning the web is gone, the whole process to be repeated the next night.

As I watch that spider so cleverly weaving his magnificent web I am struck by its patience. It seems like such a long and laborious process to go through every night. But if he is to get the reward he needs – the fly – he needs to be patient, patient enough to build the web day in day out, then patient enough to wait for his prey.

That spider reminds me that there are things in life for which I need to learn patience, that there are things that need to be built slowly and carefully if I am to find the reward life has to offer. The web I weave is one of relationships with people I love and people who can be quite prickly, it’s a web of daily chores required to keep a house functioning and routines that must be followed. At times I find myself growing impatient, wishing I could fast track all these processes, or even eliminate them altogether. But they are the web of life, and if I am to reap life’s rewards then surely I must find the patience to build that web.

Source: Scott Higgins

Spasms Of Grace

In 1999 acclaimed Scottish novelist A L Kennedy released a small book called On Bullfighting. Bullfighting is a “sport” which those living outside Spain have difficulty understanding. Yet for those who are reared on it bullfighting has an almost religious quality. Kennedy discovered that bullfighting has roots that extend way back into history, to ferocious bulls that were fought by gladiators back in the Coliseum of Julius Caesar. Her first bullfight was a terrible affair featuring amateur matadors engaging in little more than savage butchery. But when she watched the leading matadors of the day Kennedy saw another level, an intuitive understanding of the bull by the matador, a genuine engagement of human and beast.

In an interview Kennedy was asked what impression an unprepared person might gain from watching  a bullfight. Here’s her reply: “People have preconceptions—either that the audience will be full of blood-crazed Latin types engaged in some kind of orgiastic sacrifice, or the opposite cliché, that it will be fantastically beautiful and wonderfully choreographed, like a dance. Actually, there’s no bloodlust. And even with a very good matador and a very good bull, the nature of the thing is that it isn’t seamless and it can’t be entirely graceful. There will be spasms of grace. It’s a very odd, ramshackle thing. There are all kinds of strange pauses and clumsy bits, and patches of costume drama, and then patches of this very odd, sometimes beautiful communication.”

I like her description that there are “spasms of grace”. It seems an apt description for our experience of the world beyond the bullring. Just as there is much that is violent or painful or cruel in our world, just as there are odd, ramshackle things, somehow in the midst of such a world we still manage to see spasms of grace – moments of sheer goodness, beauty and generosity.

Source: Reported in interview with AL Kennedy, Atlantic Unbound 2001.

Soldier Crabs

If you ever find yourself standing on the sandbanks of a river after the tide has gone out you may have the opportunity to see soldier crabs. Soldier crabs look completely different to your run-of-the-mill river crab. Unlike most crabs which have a flat, oval shape, soldier crabs have a sky blue dome about the size of a 5 cent piece. Attached to the dome are long, spindly, cream coloured legs, which they use to lift their dome shaped body right off the sand.

But what gives soldier crabs their name is their tendency to march around in groups of tens and even hundreds. Often you’ll find them out of their holes in the sand, marching around in search of food, and with their close formation and blue shells, they look like an army. I assume this is how they got their name.

Now, if you do happen to see these soldier crabs and start walking over for a closer look you’ll discover something else about them. They have an amazing capacity to burrow down into the sand. In just moments they’ll be gone, leaving behind nothing but a little mound of sand which they have dug to create their burrow. And every time you get close this is what they’ll do. You’re too big, you overwhelm them, you could be a predator. In fact the only way you could get close to those soldier crabs would be to transform yourself into one of them.

This is a great image of how God has approached us. Should he approach us in his splendour and glory we would be overwhelmed, fearful, uncertain. So he chose to approach us in a way that made it easier for us. He became a human being – not a big, powerful and overwhelming human being, but an ordinary, everyday person – and lived among us.

Source: Scott Higgins.

So Much Effort?

Jimmy Carter is a former President of the United States. He is also a committed Christian. Every year Carter’s home church of Plains Baptist Church would have a week of mission in which congregation members would go out into the community inviting unchurched people to attend the church’s revival meetings.

Once Carter was asked to speak at another church in Georgia on the topic of “Christian Witnessing”. In his preparation he decided he would share about his involvement in his home church’s mission week. He began to note down that in 14 years he had managed to visit over 140 home sin the local community. Carter felt quite proud of his achievement, until he compared his witness for Christ with his witness for political office. Carter realised that in his 1966 campaign for Governor of Georgia he had gone out and met at least 300,000 people in an attempt to convince them to vote for him. “The comparison struck me – 300,000 visits for myself in three months, and 140 visits for God in fourteen years!”
Source: reported in Jimmy Carter Why Not the Best?

Smoke

In 1995 the movie “Smoke” was released, starring Harvey Kietel and William Hurt. The centre of the film is the Brooklyn Cigar Co., located at the corner of Third Street and Eighth Avenue.

The Brooklyn Cigar Co is owned by Auggie Wren, played by Harvey Keitel. Every morning at 8 a.m. Auggie walks across the road from his store locate don the corner of Third and Eighth and takes a photograph of it. The angle of the camera never varies, just the weather, the people on the street, the colour of the sky.

One of Auggie’s customers is Paul Benjamin. Paul’s an author who is suffering from writer’s block, he’s suffered it ever since his wife, Ellen, was shot and killed one morning right outside the Brooklyn Cigar Co. One morning Paul wanders in and sees Auggie’s camera. They get talking, and Auggie reveals that photography is his hobby, his art, his life’s work. Paul tells Auggie he’d love to see his photographs, and so, Auggie closes up the shop and takes Paul back to his house to show him his collection.

Auggie pulls out a set of large, heavy photo albums and places them before Paul Benjamin, the writer. Paul opens the first page. There, mounted on a stark black background, are four photos, and they’re all of Auggie’s shop, the Brooklyn Cigar Co, on the corner of Third and Eighth, all taken from exactly the same place, at exactly the same angle. Paul turns the next page and he sees exactly the same thing. Four photographs of Auggie’s shop, all taken from the same place, at the same angle. He turns the next page and he sees more. He starts turning the pages faster and faster, til he’s rapidly flipping through the book, when Auggie puts a hand down on the back page and says, “You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down.”

“But Auggie”, says Paul, “they’re all the same.”

“They’re all the same,” Auggie replies, “but each one is different from all the others.” Auggie explains that he has 4,000 pictures of the same place, but that each picture is different. “It’s my corner, after all. I mean, it’s just one little part of the world, but things take place there, too, just like everywhere else. It’s a record of my little spot.”

Then Paul sees someone he knows in one of the photos: his wife, who was pregnant when she was shot and killed one morning on the street outside the store. “It’s Ellen,” he says. “Look at her. Look at my sweet darling.” And he begins to cry.

Now all the photos do not look the same anymore…It’s just that you’ll never get it if you don’t slow down.

The Sky Maiden

An African tribal legend tells of a village where the cows stopped producing as much milk as normal. Puzzled by this a young man of the tribe volunteered to stay up all night to discover what was happening. He hid behind a bush and waited for many hours, til finally, a beautiful young woman carrying a large bucket rode a moonbeam from heaven to earth. She milked the cows, filled her bucket, and headed back up into the sky.

Astonished by this the young man returned the next night, but this time he had set a trap and caught the young woman. He demanded to know who she was, and the young woman replied that she was a Sky Maiden, part of a tribe that lived in the sky and had no food of their own. It was her job to find food and take it back to her tribe. She pleaded to be set free, promising to do anything the young man asked. His condition was this – he would let the young woman go only if she agreed to marry him. The Sky Maiden agreed. She returned home and three days later came back for the wedding. She carried a large box with her and said, “I will be your wife and make you happy, but you must promise never to look inside this box.”

For many weeks the couple were very happy together, but one day, while his new wife was out, curiosity got the better of the young man and he looked inside the box. To his surprise he discovered it had nothing inside! When the Sky Woman returned home her husband’s face instantly betrayed that he had looked inside the box. “You looked inside the box didn’t you?”

“Yes” replied the young man, “but it was empty. What’s so secret about an empty box?”

The Sky Woman was devastated. A tear trickled down her cheek. “I’m sorry, but I can’t live with you any longer” she said.

“Why? Why?” cried the young man. “what’s so terrible about my peeking into an empty box?”

“I’m not leaving because you opened the box” said the young woman. “I’m leaving because you said it was empty. It wasn’t empty. It was full of sky, full of the light and air and smells of my parent’s home. When I went back to the Sky Village that one last time before we married I filled that box with everything that was precious to me. How can I be your wife when what is most precious to me is emptiness to you?”

Source: Told in H Kushner, Who Needs God (Fireside, 1989)

Sir Michael Costa

Sir Michael Costa was a great orchestral Conductor of the 19th Century. It is said that one day he was conducting a rehearsal in which the orchestra was joined by a great choir. Midway through the session the piccolo player stopped playing. It seemed innocent enough – after all who would miss the tiny piccolo amidst the great mass of instruments blazing away? All of a sudden Sir Michael stopped the entire orchestra and choir. “Stop! Stop! Where’s the piccolo? What’s happened to the piccolo?”

We may sometimes feel like that piccolo player – that we don’t have much to offer, that if we stopped our ministry no one would notice anyway. Yet the Great Conductor notices, and needs us to complete his orchestral masterpiece!

Simon Wiesenthel & The SS Officer

Simon Wiesenthal was a young  Jewish man working in a Polish architectural office when Hitler’s Nazis invaded his homeland. From 1941 until the end of the war in 1945 he was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. he survived, but 89 of his relatives did not.

After the war he wrote a book called The Sunflower. The Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness. In that book he relates an odd but haunting experience. At one stage Wiesenthal and some fellow prisoners were given the job of removing garbage from a hospital for wounded German soldiers. As they did so they would pass the a cemetery housing German soldiers who had died. The graves were covered with sunflowers, something Wiesenthal envied knowing he would probably be buried in a mass grave under a pile of other Jewish corpses.

One day a nurse approached him as he was on garbage detail at the hospital. She asked him to follow her, and led him into a hospital room containing a wounded soldier.  He came across a man whose face was covered in bandages, with openings cut for mouth, nose, and ears. he was dying.

The man started to speak. “My name is Karl…I joined the SS as a volunteer. I must tell you something dreadful…. Something inhuman. It happened a year ago… Yes it is a year since the crime I committed. I have to talk to someone about it, perhaps that will help.”

He grabbed Wiesenthal by the hand, holding him tightly so he could not get away. “I must tell you of this horrible deed – tell you because…you are a Jew.” Karl told of atrocities too savage to repeat. Of hatred and rage directed against Jews. Then he turned to Simon Wiesenthal and said “In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are. I know only that you are a Jew and that is enough. I know what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and again I have longed to talk to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace…I beg for forgiveness…”

Simon Wiesenthal, an architect in his early twenties, now a prisoner, stared out the window at the sunlit courtyard. He watched a bluebottle fly buzzing the man’s body.

“At last I made up my mind” Wiesenthal says in The Sunflower. “And without a word I left the room”.

Source: Reported in Simon Wiesenthal, The Sunflower

Shoes on the Mantlepiece

There was once a very poor orphan who wanted nothing more in the world than to belong to a family. Finally, his opportunity came. He was eight years old and a family wanted to adopt him! Introductions were made, papers were signed, and just 6 days after his eighth birthday he left for his new home. He took with him his hope and his possessions – the old worn and torn clothes he was wearing and a single soft toy. His new parents were excited to have him with them, and wanted him to feel like one of the family. A special celebration dinner was held, he was given his own room, and he was introduced to the other kids in the street. His new parents took those old clothes, threw them away and bought him beautiful new clothes. They bought him a bike and more toys, and pretty soon he began to feel just like all the other kids in the neighbourhood, loved and part of a family. One thing however was curious. The young boy’s old shoes, the ones with the big holes in them, weren’t tossed out with the rest of his clothes. His new father placed them on the mantelpiece. It wasn’t long before the newly adopted son found out why. Every time that boy did something wrong his father would go and get those shoes and say “Look at all we’ve done for you. We took you in when you had nothing, but look at how you’ve behaved”

Unfortunately we do the same thing all too often in our relationships. We dredge up the past and throw it back in someone’s face, never letting them forget how much they’re in our debt. Forgiveness means throwing out the shoes as well as the clothes, refusing to dredge up the past and make it a reason for action in the present.

Sharpen Your Axe

A young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job. “That depends,” replied the foreman. “Let’s see you fell this tree.”

The young man stepped forward, and skilfully felled a great tree. Impressed, the foreman exclaimed, “You can start Monday.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by — and Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your pay check on the way out today.”

Startled, the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”

“Normally we do,” said the foreman. “But we’re letting you go today because you’ve fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you’ve dropped from first place on Monday to last place today.”

“But I’m a hard worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks!”

The foreman, sensing the young man’s integrity, thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you been sharpening your axe?”

The young man replied, “No sir, I’ve been working too hard to take time for that!”

Our lives are like that. We sometimes get so busy that we don’t take time to “sharpen the axe.” In today’s world, it seems that everyone is busier than ever, but less happy than ever. Why is that? Could it be that we have forgotten how to stay sharp?

Source: Unknown

We've Lost our Stories

The Kalahari bushmen were made famous in the movie The Gods Must be Crazy. Their recent history  is sad, for in the last 100 years the bushmen culture has been disappearing along with their lands. One of the saddest Bushmen settlements is Schmidtsridft in South Africa. There two bushmen peoples, the Xu and the Khwe, who clash fiercely with one another, live like many indigenous peoples whose way of life has been destroyed. They have grown dependent on government pensions  nd aalcohol and marijuana have, for many, become an anaesthetic against their dislocation and loss.

Then leader of the Xu Traditional Council at Schmidtsdrift is Mario Mahongo, a Xu bushman. He longs for his people to rediscover some of their spirit. But the problem is they’ve lost their stories. “A lot of our culture” he says “is lost in our lives – the old stories that were told by mothers and fathers who would go into the bush and then return to tell the others what they had seen The problem is that now no one goes out and does anything, so we have no stories to tell our children. We have nothing to pass on.”

We can learn from this sad tale. It is the stories we pass on that shape and define us, that show us the way forward and give us meaning, direction and values. For Christians it is the story told by the bible that becomes our ultimate defining story.

Source: Scott Higgins. Information on Kalahari Bushmen from National Geographic Feb 200

The Way Our Stories Shape Us

The American writer Marianne Wiggins wrote the novel Almost Heaven. One of its central characters is a middle aged woman called Melanie John. We meet her in the psychiatric unit of the Medical College of Virginia suffering from hysterical amnesia. Five weeks earlier she was a happily married mother of four living in the Richmond suburbs.

One day five weeks earlier she and her family are in their car heading down the highway. Her husband Jason, the love of her life, is driving. The four kids are in the back. Melanie has been writing in her journal when a gust of wind catches a sheet of paper and rips it out the window.

Jason pulls the car over to the side of the road, Melanie gets out and heads into the field at the side of the road to recover her writing. That’s when she hears the awful screech of tires skidding, smells the burning of rubber, and turns around to see another vehicle slam into the rear of her family’s car. The vehicle explodes. Jason and the children are killed instantly.

Melanie’s system copes by shutting down, by blocking out all memories of this day and of her family. The last 20 years, the family years, are erased from her conscious memory. She remembers the day 20 years earlier she graduated law school and went to work in the law office on Broad street. But meeting Jason and falling in love, the day of her wedding, the birth of her children, the building of their house, the times they all spent at the beach, the fights and the love – she can’t remember any of it.

The amnesia acts as an emotional anaesthetic, but it also robs her of herself. She has no sense of who she is. Inside that shell of a body who is Melanie John? What is her life about? Where does she fit? What’s her place, her purpose? Without the stories of the last 20 years she has no way of knowing. Without the stories of her past there is no meaningful present and there can be no meaningful future.

The novel recounts Melanie’s journey to recovering her memories, the pain of her loss and the regaining of her sense of self. One of the things the story reminds us about is that we are made up of our stories. Our sense of self, of who we are, of why where here, of where we fit and where we’re headed are the map by which we make sense of life.

When you reflect on this you discover that it’s true at both the individual level and the cultural level. As well as our individual stories we are shaped by our cultural stories, stories which tell us who we are, what life’s about, what we should and shouldn’t value. For Christians, the Christian faith provides us with an alternate story to that of our culture, and calls us to its sense of place, of value, of direction and meaning.

See Me

This poem was written by an old woman living in a nursing home in Ireland. It was found among her things when she died.

What do you see nurses, what do you see?
Are you thinking when you look at me?
A crabbit old woman, not very wise,
Uncertain of habit, with far away eyes,
Who dribbles her food and makes no reply
When you say in a loud voice- “I do wish you’d try.”
And forever is losing a sock or a shoe.
Who unresisting or not, lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding, the long day to fill.
Is that what you think, is that what you see?
Open your eyes, nurse, you’re not looking at me.

I’ll tell you who I am, as I sit here so still,
As I use at your bidding, and eat at your will,
I’m a small child of ten, with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters who loved one another,
A young girl of 16, with wings on her feet,
Dreaming that soon now a lover she’ll meet.
A bride soon at 20, my heart give a leap.
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep.
At 25 now, I have young of my own,
Who need me to build a secure, happy home.
A women of 30, my young now grow so fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last.
At 40, my young sons have grown and are gone,
But my man’s beside me to see I don’t mourn.
At 50 once more, babies play round my knee,
Again we know children, my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead.
I look at the future and shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing young of their own,
And I think of the years and the love that I’ve known,
I’m and old women now and nature is cruel,
Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles, grace and vigour depart.
There is now a stone where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells,
And now and again, my battered heart swells,
I remember the joys and I remember the pain,
And I’m living and loving life over again,
I think of the years all too few- gone too fast,
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.
Open your eyes, nurse open and see.
Not an empty old women, look closer- see ME.

Source: unknown

The Secret to a Long Life

“It’s a treasure more valuable than gold,” the young girl said. “I wouldn’t trade it for nothing'”

They had gathered for a family celebration they said. Oh, not a birthday, anniversary or birth. They were celebrating death. That’s right. A celebration of dying.

I know for some of you it might sound odd. Death is sad and mournful. There is no happiness or joy in losing someone you love you would say. But for some death is joy filled. It’s a crossing over to a better place. It’s a spiritual completion and a holy event.

For Amy it meant getting the best gift ever.

Amy was very close to her Grandmother. They visited often and shared some of the most memorable moments. When she was very small, they played together, walked together and when Amy was sick Grandma would stay with her so Mom and Dad could go to work. So they loved each other in all situations and prayed together to resolve their deepest concerns.

Like the time Amy fell while she was carrying her Mom’s best vase. Without hesitation Amy turned to Grandma and said, “It’s prayer time. This one’s a big one Grandma.” I believe that Amy thought that her Grandma had as much to do with healing and fixing things as God did. Maybe even more. That’s how much Amy trusted her Grandma. Their love could withstand anything life could throw their way.

But it was inevitable. There would certainly come a time when reality and old age would gain the upper hand. This time Grandma couldn’t kiss it and make it better. Grandma couldn’t pray this one away. You see, Grandma was dying. It was her time and what a splendid time it was.

It was Spring and the flowers that she and Amy attended to each year were in full bloom. You might think that this is the perfect time to be alive. But Grandma convinced Amy otherwise. At 91, she had lived a full life. She had no regrets. Except perhaps leaving Amy alone. But she had taken care of that, too.

“Amy,” she whispered quietly. “In my closet at home there is a small wooden box. It has your name on it. In it is all that I can give you. All that I hold dear. In that box is the secret to living a long life.”

No, she didn’t leave a fortune behind. She had no diamonds or pearls to pass on. What she left was her secret to life. On her final day she called Amy by her side. They reflected back on a life time of love, happiness and commitment. They laughed and cried and before saying goodbye, Grandma pulled her close, kissed her on the forehead and gently fell into a deep and final sleep. A sleep that would take her home to the grandest celebration of all.

Weeks after her passing Amy retrieved the box from Grandma’s closet. She took it out to the kitchen table where they shared many happy moments together. Placing the old wooden box on the table, she carefully opened it.

There inside Amy found an envelope with the words “My secret to a long life.” Her heart raced with the thought that Grandma had gone through all this trouble just for her. She held the note close to her chest and said out loud, “I love you Grandma, thanks!”

Inside the envelope was one index card. On it were written four words…”Live until you die!”

Amy roared with laughter. She ran out of the house and down the street to where her Mom was. There the two of them sat and laughed until it hurt.

Some where in that laughter Amy and her Mom decided to hold a special celebration every year. The big day was the day Grandma died. Everyone who knew and loved Grandma would come home for the big event no matter where life had taken them.

There is a profound truth in those simple words for I have found many who have long ago died in spirit and hope yet continue to breathe.

For Amy and her family it’s not a secret anymore. It’s a celebration.

Source: Bob Perks © 2001. Used with permission

Scarab Beatles

Many people find beetles and bugs somewhat creepy, but if there’s one beetle in the world that could turn you into a beetle lover – the jewel scarab. Jewel scarab’s live in the jungles of Honduras and have the shape of your regular Christmas beetle. But their colours are so dazzling and beautiful that they can sell for up to $500 a beetle. Beautiful flaming reds, bright golds, silvers that resemble bright, shiny chrome. Even the beetle hater finds jewel scarabs dazzling and beautiful!

But the jewel scarab’s beauty doesn’t come automatically. Every scarab has modest, even ugly beginnings. The scarab starts life as a soft, mushy, grey-white grub growing inside a rotting tree stump. They spend their life like this for around a year, until finally, when the rainy season arrives, the adult scarabs emerge soft bodied and pale. The within hours, their bodies harden and their splendid colours show. They only live for another three months, but what a glorious existence it is.

People are just like scarabs. We may not feel terribly beautiful and attractive. In fact there may be parts of you that feel distinctly ugly – and I’m not talking just about your body, but about your sprit, your mind, your thought life, your character. But it’s the work of the Spirit of God to make us beautiful. It may seem to take a lifetime, but as the Spirit works on us, we will emerge as beautiful, dazzling, shining creatures gloriously bearing the image of our Creator.

Source: Scientific information from National Geographic, Feb 2001.

Sacrificing an Olympic Dream

Kathy Poe and Esther Kim were best friends. They were also competing to represent the US in taekwondo at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Working through separate sides of the draw they both made it to the final of the Olympic trials. Whichever of them won would go to the Games. Poe however dislocated her knee in the previous match and couldn’t compete. Then came an incredible act of friendship. Knowing her friend’s knee would be healed by the Games Esther Kim forfeited the match and her spot on the Olympic team.

“You will have the gold medal around your neck and I feel inside I have a gold medal in my heart,” she said. “There are other ways to be a champion. A real martial artist is a champion everyday in life, too.”

 

Source: CNN

Facing Problems

In one of the Charlie Brown comic strips Linus and Charlie Brown are talking together. Linus says, “I don’t like to face problems head on. I think the best way to solve problems is to avoid them. In fact, this is a distinct philosophy of mine. No problem is so big or complicated that it can’t be run away from!”

Roy Camponella

Roy Campanella was one of the first African Americans to play in the US Baseball major leagues. In a distinguished career he won the Brooklyn Dodgers Most Valued Player award many times, and in 1955 was in the team that won the World Series.

But in January 1958 his career was cut short after a car crash left him a quadriplegic. After he was injured he spent a lot of time in the Institute of Physical medicine and Rehabilitation in New York City. One day he stopped to read a gold plaque upon one of the walls, and for someone who had been blessed with such athletic gifts it resonated deeply within him:

“I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.

I was made weak, that I might learn to humbly obey…

I asked for health that I might do great things.

I was given infirmity that might do better things…

I asked for riches that I might be happy,

I was given poverty that I might be wise…

I asked for power, that I might have the praise of others.

I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God…

I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life.

I was given life that I might enjoy all things…

I got nothing I asked for, but everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.

I am, among men, most richly blessed!

Source: Scott Higgins, using information from Baseball Library.com and Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Roger

Tony Campolo tells the sad story from his high school days of how he failed to truly be a Christian. There was a boy in his class named Roger. Roger was gay. Everyone knew and tormented him for it. They heaped verbal and even physical abuse upon him. One day the abuse reached a crescendo. Five of boys dragged Roger into the shower room, shoved him into the corner and urinated all over him.

Around two o’clock the next morning Roger went down to the basement of his house and hung himself.

When they told Tony, he says he realized he wasn’t a Christian. He knew all the right answers and sincerely believed all the right things and had lots of good moral practises. But Tony didn’t live faith out when it came to  Roger. If he had he says he would have stood up for Roger when the others were mocking him, he would have been a friend, and just maybe, Roger would still be alive today.

Source; Reported in Tony Campolo, Let Me Tell You A Story

Robert Robinson

Robert Robinson was an English clergyman who lived in the 18th century. Not only was he a gifted pastor and preacher he was also a highly gifted poet and hymn writer. However, after many years in the pastorate his faith began to drift. He left the ministry and finished up in France, indulging himself in sin.

One night he was riding in a carriage with a Parisian socialite who had recently been converted to Christ. She was interested in his opinion on some poetry she was reading: Come thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing thy grace, Streams of mercy never failing, Call for hymns of loudest praise.

When she looked up from her reading the socialite noticed Robinson was crying.

“What do I think of it?” he asked in a broken voice. “I wrote it. But now I’ve drifted away from him and can’t find my way back.”

“But don’t you see” the woman said gently, “The way back is written right here in the third line of your poem: Streams of mercy never ceasing. Those streams are flowing even here in Paris tonight.”

That night Robinson recommitted his life to Christ.

 

Source: reported in R Kilpatrick, “Assurance and Sin” in RC Sproul (editor), Doubt and Assurance (Baker, 1993)

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