The Girl - by Peter A. Black

It’s the big day! Three double-decker buses roll to a stop, kissing the kerb. All is abuzz. Little kids, teens and adults – mums and dads, singles and seniors, are herded aboard. Today’s the Annual Sunday School Outing, eagerly anticipated; a highlight excursion to a country park by the banks of Lochwinnoch.


Three Buses like those in the background

Fun galore – races for every age group and lots of prizes; sneaking off with a couple of pals to explore, then falling into the water and getting soaked . . . again, this year? Brief, stiff lecture about wandering off.



Credit: Lochwinnoch.info

Breathe it in – the familiar smell of wood-fire smoke, blending with the mellow odor of damp woollen clothes drying out. Body gradually warming up in chill Scottish air, fingers cradling a cup of hot sugary tea. Hmm. Lunch – everyone gets the same: a tasty Scottish spiced-sausage pie, fern cupcake, Blue Riband caramel wafer bar and a big round, icing-topped cherry-in-the-middle jam-filled Empire Biscuit, or maybe a shiny red-and-green apple.

~~~
What a grand view from the upper deck! Almost all are aboard now – all two-hundred-plus of us. Church door and gates are locked, Mr. F              climbs on board our idling bus. Engines roar and gears engage. We’re off!

Her printed cotton dress moves gently in the breeze. Her brown hair – not too short, but not too long, either – doesn’t hide her endearing round, rosy cheeks. What do her eyes say, as she stands all alone, gazing up, eyes scanning the windows? The lower deck? The upper deck?



Source: MRM Black

I gaze into those eyes; a fleeting second is all I have. What do I see? Disappointment? Sadness? What does she feel?

Mystified?

Abandoned?
Unsure?
Afraid?

Left behind, all alone . . . on a city side-street, outside the padlocked gate of a church.

What will she do now? What will happen to her?

I’m on the bus. I’m ten.
She’s . . . three-and-a-half, maybe four.
~~~
I’ve wondered about that little girl more often than I can recall during the more than six decades since that day.

She tugs at my heart every time.

~~+~~
Peter, now retired from fulltime pastoral service, is an author, inspirational columnist and songwriter living in Southwestern Ontario. He enjoys singing and playing sacred music and praise songs – especially for his friends in a number of residential care facilities and in area congregations.

~ Raise Your Gaze ... Mindful Musings of a Grateful Heart

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Storytelling—Carolyn R. Wilker

If someone asked me what I liked best when I was a child, it might have been hearing stories. When Mom tucked us in at night, she told us a story—such as Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Bears that she told from memory. Every week at Sunday School, the teacher read a Bible story.

When we girls were a little older, we told those stories or read to our younger siblings. When relatives gathered around the table for a meal, guess what? More stories.

During my Grade 6 year, when I was off school for several weeks on account of illness, my mother knew a good way to occupy my time. She bought three brand new books for me and I sped through them. I had nothing else to do, but read and sleep. Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, Trixie Belden and the Red Trailer Mystery were done in a matter of days, and having new books of my own was a treasure.

My Grade 8 teacher read to us each day after lunch. I didn’t want to miss any of the adventures, whether it was Tom Sawyer or Swiss Family Robinson, two of the three books he read to us that year.

We had a library in our nearby community. One day Mom said to my sister and me that we could go to the library while she did some errands in town and that we were to be back at the car in ten minutes. I was overwhelmed at the choices and neither of us could not decide on one book in such a short time and so went back to the car without a book, which surprised my mother. We would have needed a library card and we lacked the time to do both. It was as bit disappointing and we didn’t get another opportunity. Farm life was busy; and time was at a premium.

In high school we had our own library in the school, from which I borrowed one book in my first year. I travelled to school by bus, and it was winter; the buses were cancelled because of a blizzard, and though I returned the book immediately after getting off the bus the next day, the librarian still gave me a hard time because the book was one day late. I never borrowed another book from that place.

Later, when I taught preschoolers, I borrowed books from the nearby library to augment our school’s collection and ones that I wanted to read too. That was the real beginning of my love of the library and being a regular patron.

I took my children to the library when they could only toddle across the floor or climb the steps on hands and knees. We borrowed stacks of books each time and read a story at bedtime every night and during the day.

 

Middle daughter with her book about cats to tease her into reading

My girls are grown. Our eldest is an avid reader, the youngest is studying for a new career, and the middle one reads to her two small children. And I read and tell stories to my granddaughters too.  

Today, after telling stories at the Waterloo Region Museum, to other people’s children, I stopped at the library to pick up a book that I had reserved, and then another. 

On Tuesday this week, a bag of books I have collected and read over the years, minus ones I cannot part with or need to keep, will go to a new home—the Ronald McDonald House—so that parents, having a sick child and time on their hands, might pick up a book for pleasure and enjoy it themselves or read to their child. It’s a small thing I can do to help them and share the pleasures of a good story.

www.carolynwilker.ca

Once Upon a Sandbox, Hidden Brook Press

The Other Prodigal Son - Arends

My new Christianity Today column is about my empathy for the "older brother" ... and something he taught me only recently ... Here it is!

The Other Prodigal Son

The Prodigal's coming-home gala was for both sons.

 Growing up in Sunday school, I was very familiar with the Prodigal Son—at least as he was rendered in flannelgraph. I disapproved of his behavior with righteous indignation; as the first-born child of a Baptist household, I empathized with the older brother. How was it fair that the bad boy got a party and the good one didn't? It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the story was infinitely more about the father's love than the prodigal's misconduct.

Only recently, however, have I begun to discover that the older son in Jesus' story is every bit as lost as the younger one. In his book The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller points out that the two brothers represent the two basic ways people try to make life work. The younger son pursues "self-discovery"—he's on a quest to find and fulfill himself, even if a few people have to get hurt along the way. The older brother is committed to a more socially respectable way of being in the world—the way of "moral conformity." He's on a program of self-salvation, earning the approval of his community and the favor of his father; when he feels the terms of this deal are violated, his good attitude evaporates into resentment.

Kenneth Bailey is a theologian who spent 40 years living in the Middle East, striving to resituate Jesus' stories in their original Palestinian context. He points out that for Jesus' audience, respect for one's father is paramount; the younger son's request for his inheritance from a still-healthy patriarch constitutes an unthinkable offense. It amounts to saying, "I wish you were dead."

But the older son's conduct—refusing to join the party for his brother and arguing with his dad in front of the guests—is no less egregious. Hospitality was of supreme value in 1st-century Palestine. The entire village would likely have been invited to the party, and the oldest son would be expected to co-host the proceedings. His refusal is another round of humiliating rejection for the father. But the father actually goes out looking for this son, entreating him to come join the party, and Jesus leaves the story unfinished. Will the son abandon his own plan for making life work and accept the extravagant gift of his father's love and inclusion? Or will he stick to the terms of his deal and exclude himself from his place in the family?

I was discussing this story not long ago with a Bible study group made up mostly of "older brothers" and "older sisters." We'd played by the rules much of our lives, but we were beginning to see that our good behavior had been at least subconsciously a form of self-salvation—an attempt to earn God's approval and maybe even obligate him to do what we wanted. When we considered the fact that Jesus told this story to the Pharisees (older brothers if ever there were some!) in response to their outrage over his association with "sinners," we realized the parable is primarily about the father's relationship with the older son. "How did this story about two sons ever even get called 'The Prodigal Son'?" one of us asked. "An older brother must have named it!" was the answer.

As we pondered the implications, one of the women confessed, "Still, it doesn't seem fair that the father had never thrown a party for the older son." ?Several of us admitted that we, too, related to the son's complaint.

We moved on to another of Jesus' stories: the parable of the Great Banquet. I began to wonder if, from Jesus' perspective, having a feast thrown in one's honor is a blessing, but being invited to help the father host the banquet is a vastly greater gift. My husband and I love holding pool parties in our backyard. When things go well—when lots of people come and the food is tasty and there is laughter and music and good conversation—there is a particular satisfaction and intimacy we share as we debrief together over the cleanup.

Maybe the father in Jesus' story felt he could honor and bless his oldest boy more by inviting him into the deep relationship of mutual service than by merely giving him a party of his own. Maybe becoming a Christian is not only accepting Jesus into my life, but also accepting his incredible invitation to be a part of his life—to participate missionally in the triune God's cosmic plan of redemption.

As Jesus tells it, the Father is hosting a lavish banquet, and we're invited—not because of our own merit, but because he loves us. And there's more. He's invited us to help him throw the party—neither as servants nor as guests, but as family.

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