Glad To Have Helped

In 1999, Kevin Stephan of Lancaster, New York, was a batboy for his younger brother’s Little League baseball team. During one game, a player who was warming up accidentally hit Kevin in the chest with a bat. Kevin fell to the ground, unconscious. His heart stopped beating.

“All I remember is that, all of a sudden, I got hit in the chest with something, and I turned around and passed out,” Kevin says. Penny Brown, a nurse whose son played on the team, was able to revive Kevin.

Seven years later, Penny Brown was eating at the Hillview Restaurant in Depew, New York, when she began to choke on her food. “The food wasn’t going anywhere, and I totally couldn’t breathe,” said Penny. “It was very frightening.”

Patrons screamed for help. One of the restaurant employees — a volunteer firefighter — ran out from the back. He wrapped his arms around the victim, applied the Heimlich maneuver, and saved the woman’s life. The firefighter was Kevin Stephan, the boy whom Penny had saved seven years earlier.

 — Aaron Saykin, “Teen Saves Life 
of Woman Who Once Saved His,” 
wusatv9.com (February 4, 2006)

Keep On Singing

Like any good mother, when Karen found out that another baby was on the way, she did what she could to help her three-year-old son, Michael, prepare for a new sibling.  They found out that the new baby is going to be a girl, and day after day, night after night, Michael sings to his sister in Mommy's tummy.  The pregnancy progressed normally for Karen.  But when it was time to give birth to the baby, complications arise.  Michael's little sister is born in serious condition.  The infant has to be placed in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Mary's Hospital Knoxville, Tennessee.

The days inch by.  The little girl gets worse.  The pediatric specialist tells the parents, "There is very little hope.  Be prepared for the worst."

Karen and her husband contact a local cemetery about a burial plot.  They had fixed up a special room in their home for the new baby, but now they plan a funeral.  Michael keeps begging his parents to let him see his sister, "I want to sing to her," he says.

Week two in intensive care.  Things don't look good.  Michael keeps nagging about singing to his sister, but kids are never allowed in Intensive Care.  Karen makes up her mind.  She will take Michael whether they like it or not.  If he doesn't see his sister now, he may never see her alive.  She dresses him in an oversized scrub suit and marches him into ICU.  He looks like a walking laundry basket, but the head nurse recognizes him as a child and bellows, "Get that kid out of here now!  No children are allowed in ICU."  The mother rises up strong in Karen, and the usually mild-mannered lady glares steel-eyed into the head nurse's face, her lips a firm line.  "He is not leaving until he sings to his sister!"

Karen tows Michael to his sister's bedside.  He gazes at the tiny infant losing the battle to live.  And he begins to sing.  In the pure-hearted voice of a three-year-old, Michael sings:  "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray..."

Instantly the baby girl responds.  The pulse rate becomes calm and steady.

"Keep on singing, Michael."  "You never know, dear, how much I love you.  Please don't take my sunshine away..."

The ragged, strained breathing becomes as smooth as a kitten's purr.  "The other might, dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you in my arms..."  Michael's little sister relaxes as rest, healing rest, seems to sweep over her.  Tears conquer the face of the bossy head nurse.  Karen glows.  "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.  Please don't take my sunshine away."

The baby is well enough to go home!  Woman's Day Magazine called it "The Miracle of a Brother's Song."  The medical staff just called it a miracle.  Karen called it a miracle of God's love.

- Robert J. Morgan, Preacher's Sourcebook of Creative Sermon Illustrations (Thomas Nelson, 2007)

There Is Something Waiting For Me

A self-made millionaire Eugene Lang greatly changed the lives of a sixth-grade class in East Harlem.  Mr. Lang had been asked to speak to a class of the fifty-nine sixth-graders.  What could he say to inspire these students, most of whom would drop out of school?  He wondered how he could get these predominantly black and Puerto Rican children even to look at him.

Scrapping his notes, he decided to speak to them from his heart.  "Stay in school," he admonished, "and I'll help pay the college tuition of every one of you."

At that moment the lives of those student changed.  For the first time they had hope.

One student said, "I had something to look forward to, something waiting for me.  It was a golden feeling."

Nearly ninety percent of that class went on to graduate from high school.

- Parade magazine