Too Busy To Play Until It's Too Late

My precious boy with the golden hair 

Came up one day beside my chair

And fell upon his bended knee

And said, "Oh, Mommy, please play with me!"

I said, "Not now, go on and play;

I've got so much to do today."

He smiled through tears in eyes so blue

When I said, "We'll play when I get through."

But the chores lasted all through the day

And I never did find time to play.

When supper was over and dishes done,

I was much too tired for my little son.

I tucked him in and kissed his cheek

And watched my angel fall asleep.

As I tossed and turned upon my bed,

Those words kept ringing in my head,

"Not now, son, go on and play,

I've got so much to do today."

I fell asleep and in a minute's span,

My little boy is a full-grown man.

No toys are there to clutter the floor;

No dirty fingerprints on the door;

No snacks to fix; no tears to dry;

The rooms just echo my lonely sigh.

And now I've got the time to play;

But my precious boy is gone away.

I awoke myself with a pitiful scream

And realized it was just a dream

For across the room in his little bed,

Lay my curly-haired boy, the sleepy-head.

My work will wait 'til another day

For now I must find some time to play. 

- Dianna (Ars. Joe) Neal

Eternal Lessons From Dad

Here are two of the most important things Michael Tait of dc Talk learned from his dad:

• Love people. “That’s what he taught,” says Tait says, “and that’s what he did. He cried with people, he laughed with people. Everybody was his friend. He couldn’t care less about your race, your nationality, your socioeconomic status, whatever. All he cared about was you, your soul.”

• Live for God. Tait sums up the lesson this way: “Don’t get caught up in the things of this world, because they’re just fleeting. The world will get the best of you if you let it, so live for God.”

Tait was visiting his parents in Washington, D.C., during the Christmas holidays in 1997 when his dad complained of stomach pains. Michael took him to the hospital, where doctors found cancer. Michael was present a few weeks later when his dad breathed his last. “The man was my hero,” Tait said.

 — Mark Moring, “My Dad, My Hero,” 
Campus Life (May – June 1999)

For All That He Has Done, I Choose To Give Him My Love

While helping her mother prepare for Christmas, a little girl asked about the meaning of this holiday.  The mother told her that Christmas was the time of the year we celebrate the birthday of Jesus, God's Son.  The little girl asked her mother why Jesus didn't get the presents if it was his birthday.  The mother explained the tradition of gift exchange as a way of showing love for one another and the matter was dropped at that.

On the evening before Christmas the little girl brought a gift-wrapped package from her room and placed it under the tree.  "What's in the box?" her mother asked.

"A gift for Jesus.  I am leaving it under the tree so he can open it tonight while I am asleep."

The mother did not want her daughter to be disappointed, so during the night she opened the package.  But there was nothing in it.  The next morning her daughter raced into the living room to see if her package had been opened.  It had!  She shouted to her mother, "Jesus opened his present last night!"

The mystified mother walked over to her daughter and asked what she had given Jesus.

The little girl explained, "I figure that Jesus has about everything he needs, and I can't give him much cuz I'm just a little girl.  But there is one thing I can give him.  So I decided to give him a BOX OF LOVE."

- submitted by Fred Lowery, The Pastor's Story File (December 1993)

Christmas Peace

Eighty years ago, on the first Christmas Day of World War I, British and German troops put down their guns and celebrated peacefully together in the no-man's land between the trenches.

The war, briefly, came to a halt.

In some places, festivities began when German troops lit candles on Christmas trees on their parapets so the British sentries a few hundred yards away could see them.

Elsewhere, the British acted first, starting bonfires and letting off rockets.

Pvt. Oswald Tilley of the London Rifle Brigade wrote to his parents: "Just you think that while you were eating your turkey, etc., I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before!  It was astounding."

All along the line that Christmas Day, soldiers found their enemies were much like them and began asking why they should be trying to kill each other.

The generals were shocked.  High Command diaries and statements express anxiety that if that sort of  thing spread it could sap troops' will to fight.

Th soldiers in khaki and gray sang carols to each other, exchanged gifts of tobacco,  jam, sausage, chocolate and liquor, traded names and addresses and played soccer between the shell holes and barbed wire.  They even paid mutual trench visits.

This day is called "the most famous truce in military history" by British television producer Malcolm Brown and researcher Shirley Seaton in their book "Christmas Truce," published in 1984.

- "Enemies Kept Christmas Truce in Trenches 80 Years Ago," in the Elizabethton Star (December 25, 1994)

Honoring My Mother

About the time he was in junior high, Dr. Benjamin Carson, now director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Baltimore, Maryland, and author of several books, realized that his mother couldn’t read. For years, Ben and his brother had read books and scratched out reports for their mother, assuming their mom was checking every word. But she didn’t have a clue what they were writing.

Ben’s illiterate mom didn’t twist her hands over her lack of learning and give up hope of raising intelligent boys, however. Instead, she gave her boys what she had — interest, accountability, and the courage to demand extra work. And it paid off.

Years later, someone asked Ben why his mother still lived with him, even after he was married and had a family of his own. “You don’t understand,” Ben answered. “If it weren’t for that woman, I wouldn’t be living here. She earned this.”

 — Kevin Leman, What a Difference a Daddy Makes (Nelson, 2000)

The Present Is Not For My Son's Future

In the May 28, 1998, edition of USA Today, the following appeared among the letters to the editor:

Will somebody help me save my son?

My son is two years old and is a reflection of complete innocence.  His vulnerability to this harsh, violent ignorant and uncaring world just rips my heart apart.  He knows nothing of the killing within the schools that are supposed to prepare children for the world.  He knows nothing of the abuse that happens within the homes of children just his age.  As he plays with his toys, he is oblivious to the tragedies that occur every day across the country.  And as he clutches his blanket, sleeping soundly, dreaming of the mommy and daddy who love him, he has no idea of the complete social and moral decay of our country.

Does anyone care anymore?  Will somebody please, please help me save my son?

- Edward Moats, Bellair Beach, Florida

- Letters to the editor in USA Today, (May 28, 1998)

When You Don't Make Divorce An Option

Jill Briscoe, author, speaker, and pastor's wife, writes that one of the things her parents did right was to maintain their commitment to each other without ever considering divorce as an option.  She writes, "My sister and I knew that Mom and Dad enjoyed being married, would stay married, and hoped we'd do the same.  Differences they had were kept between them and worked out in the context of the promises they made to each other and to God on their wedding day.  There was no option out!  As someone has said, when the doors on a marriage are shut and bolted and a fire breaks out, all your time and energy goes to putting out the flames."

- Jill Briscoe, "A Foundation for Faith," What My Parents Did Right, comp. and ed. Gloria Gaither (StarSong Publishing Group, 1991)

I'm Sure My Dad's Singing Along

One of my fondest memories of Christmas Eve is singing “Angels We Have Heard on High” alongside my father when I was about nine years old. Dad was a shy man, so he normally would sing hymns very softly. On this night, though, he sang it full bore, off-key, and with the deepest yearning that I had ever heard in him. Dad was drunk that night.

He was a melancholic, battered man, a World War II army veteran who saw many of his friends blown to bits. He sought refuge in alcohol, which made life pretty frightening for Mom, my older brother, Randy, and me. But in church I saw the gentle Cajun who grew up Catholic and who still feared God.

Only a few years after this Christmas Eve Service, my brother became a Jesus freak. Dad began reading the Bible to help my brother realize how far he had stepped off the deep end into religious extremism. Within a year Dad realized that my brother had found a relationship with Jesus that Dad had not discovered. So Dad surrendered to Jesus.

Then his drinking simply stopped. He still struggled with anger. We still argued about the length of my hair, my failure to practice the piano, and my halfhearted efforts at homework. Still, I began associating Dad more with love than with fear.

I spent nearly every Christmas with Dad until his death in 1992. We sang “Angels We Have Heard on High” together many times, but somehow my keenest memory is of Dad singing it with such yearning. Now, when I sing this carol, I know a small measure of the yearning Dad felt when I was a boy. I close my eyes and imagine Dad in heaven, singing along at the top of his redeemed lungs, feeling drunk on his adoration for God.

 — Douglas LeBlanc, Chesterfield, Virginia

This Is A Way To Help Themselves

Clarence Jordan, a philosopher-farmer in Americus, Georgia, was convinced that poor people living in dilapidated shacks could improve themselves with a little support. “They don’t need charity,” he said to Millard Fuller, who visited Jordan’s church community, Koinonia Farm. “They need a way to help themselves.”

Millard Fuller, thirty, who was nearly a millionaire, was inspired by Jordan to begin what today is a worldwide organization to provide housing for the poor. Habitat for Humanity runs on what he calls “the theology of the hammer.” The group raises money and recruits volunteers to renovate and build homes, which are sold at cost. Mortgages are interest free to qualified recipients. Habitat now builds or renovates twelve houses every day.

 — Ward Williams, 
“Jesus’ Vacation,” PreachingToday.com

Fat And Pretty

The little boy loved his mother and loved to sit on her lap.  One day the boy was sitting on his mother's lap while she was reading a book to him.  After she finished the book, he cuddled up close to her and said, "I love you, Mommy!"

His mother was grateful for his love but mistakenly questioned the worth of its object.  She asked, "How can you love a mother who is so fat and ugly?"

The son quickly protested, "Oh, Mommy, you are not!  You're fat and pretty!"

- Parables, Etc. (March 1996)

"I Love You" Is A Lot To Hold On To

Kelly James, a landscape architect, and two of his friends were climbing Mount Hood in Welches, Oregon, when they encountered a blizzard. Kelly called his family on his cell phone, but the storm was too severe for rescue workers to come in. All three hikers perished.

On the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric asked Kelly’s widow if she was angry with her husband for climbing the mountain. Karen James replied, “I’m really sad our journey is over for a while, and I miss him terribly. But he loved life so much, and he taught me how to love. He taught me how to live. And I don’t know how you can be angry at someone who loved their family, who loved God . . . and gave back so much more than he took.”

When asked how her husband would like to be remembered, Karen said, “Kelly had this little ornament, and he’s had it since he was little. It’s a manger. It’s just this little plastic thing. And it’s always the tradition that [our son] Jack and Kelly put it on the tree together. So I said this Christmas, ‘We’re going to put that ornament on the tree.’ One of the things that we really understand about Christmas is how that little baby born in a barn is the reason our family has so much strength now. And that is really important to Kelly.”

Couric asked if the family’s confidence in God had been tested by her husband’s death. “No, it was never tested,” Karen answered. “I remember one time we were watching TV, and Kelly said to me, ‘I can’t wait to go to heaven.’ I said, ‘What?’ We were watching some show that had nothing to do with heaven. And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s going to be really cool.’ And I said, ‘Can you hold off? Can we wait?’ But he wasn’t scared. Those conversations are what I hold on to.”

When asked if there were any lessons to be learned from her husband’s tragedy, Karen replied, “I’ve told a colleague of mine that men should hold their wives really, really tight, because you don’t know when our journey’s going to end. My journey ended with an ‘I love you.’ And . . . for others, if their journey ends with an ‘I love you,’ it’s a lot to hold on to.”

 — Ted De Haas, “Widow Thankful for Her Husband’s Life and Witness,” PreachingToday.com; source; “Climber’s Widow Tells Her Story,” 
CBS Evening News (December 21, 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)

Only Seven Years

In Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, the central character, Raskolnikov, finally confessed his crime and was sent to Siberia.  Sonya, the girl who loved him, followed voluntarily and found a job in a town nearest his work camp.  At first, Raskolnikov was bitter about his exile and contemptuous of everyone, including Sonya.  But the day came when her unflagging love and humble service melted his heart, and he loved her in return.

Dostoyevsky writes, "They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite resources of life for the heart of the other.  they had another seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and infinite happiness before them!  But he had risen again, and he knew it and felt it in his being, while she--she lived only in his life.  Seven years, only seven years!"

- Roy B. Zuck, The Speaker's Quote Book (Christian Literature Crusade, 1997)

A Love That Is Short-Lived Yet Everlasting

Churchmen had been celibate for centuries, and John Calvin wondered if he, a first-generation Protestant, should break tradition.  "I am not yet married," he wrote.  "Whether I shall ever marry I do not know.  In any case, if I take a wife it will be that, freed from cares, I can consecrate myself to The Lord."

He fell in love at age thirty, but the marriage was called off.  His friend William Farel suggested another woman, but Calvin was unimpressed.  A third prospect looked promising, but Calvin was cautious.  "I will look very foolish if my hope gain falls through."

It did.  "I have not found a wife," he lamented, "and frequently hesitate as to whether I ought any more to seek one."  Suddenly he noticed a widow in his congregation, Idelette de Bure, who had been converted through his preaching.  He made frequent pastoral visits to her, and was smitten.  They quickly married.

Idelette proved an ideal pastor's wife.  She visited the sick, poor, and distressed.  She entertained visitors who came consulting her famous husband.  She furnished her table with vegetables from her own garden.  She bore patiently the loss of the couple's three infants.  She softened Calvin's hard edge and provided him joy.

When Idelette fell ill, Calvin anguished.  As the hour of death drew near, they talked about "the grace of Christ, the hope of everlasting life, our marriage, and her approaching departure."  Then he turned aside to pray.  Idelette suddenly cried "O glorious resurrection!  O God of Abraham and of all our fathers, the believers of all the ages have trusted on Thee and none has hoped in vain.  And now I fix my hope on Thee."  Having thus spoken, she died.  Calvin wrote to Farel on April 2, 1549, "Intelligence of my wife's death has perhaps reached you.  I do what I can to keep myself from being overwhelmed with grief.  My friends also leave nothing undone that may administer relief to my mental suffering."

John and Idelette enjoyed nine years together.  Never again did John Calvin seek a wife, for no one could replace his ideal Idelette.

- Robert J. Morgan, On This Day (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1997)

First Words He Heard Was Of Love

For fifty-seven years, Steve Henning of Huntley, Illinois, could not hear music, laughter, or human speech. Even though he lived a full life, he still longed to hear the voices of those he loved.

In the winter of 2001, he learned of a surgical procedure that would allow sound waves to bypass the nonfunctioning part of his ear and travel directly to the auditory nerve. On January 30, he was operated on. Because the implanted device could not be activated until the swelling in the ear decreased, doctors and Steve didn’t know for six weeks if the operation was successful.

Finally, the six weeks was up. As Steve waited nervously, the audiologist programmed the cochlear implant. Then he invited Steve’s wife to say something. Pat Henning leaned toward her husband and gently said, “I love you.” Able to hear for the first time in six decades, Steve’s face broke into a smile. The first words he heard were of love.

 — Greg Asimakoupoulos, “Hearing God’s Word of Love,” PreachingToday.com

A Mother's Selfless Rescue

Police don't know where Deborah Kemp found the strength.  But Kemp knows.  Six-year-old daughter Ashleye was in the backseat, and Kemp wasn't going to let the man steal her car after she pumped gas.  The thirty-four-year-old mother was dragged on her knees for several blocks as she clung to the door and steering wheel of the moving car.

"I wasn't trying to be a hero," she said.  "I was concerned about my baby... there was part of me in that car."  Kemp eventually pulled the suspect from the car and beat him with an anti theft club device while he apologized and begged her to stop.

The driverless car went out of control and smashed into a restaurant, breaking a gas line.  That's when the child woke up.  Kemp suffered only ripped pants and bloody knees.  The child was not injured.  The suspect can't walk: One leg is broken, the other fractured.  He also suffered head injuries.

- from an Atlanta newspaper, December 1994, submitted by Rose Hodgin to Parables, Etc. (July 1995)

He Shall Live Because Of Your Sacrifice

During the seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, sentenced a soldier to be shot for his crimes.  The execution was to take place at the ringing of the evening curfew bell.  However, the bell did not sound.  The soldier's fiancée had climbed into the belfry and clung to the great clapper of the bell to prevent it from striking.  

When she was summoned by Cromwell to account for her actions, she wept as she showed him her bruised and bleeding hands.  Cromwell's heart was touched and he said, "Your lover shall live because of your sacrifice.  Curfew shall not ring tonight!"

- Our Daily Bread, quoted in The Speaker's Quote Book (Christian Literature Crusade, 1997)

More Than The External

John Blanchard visited a secondhand book store and selected a book that interested him.  When he began to browse the book, however, it was not the words of the book that intrigued him, but the notes penciled in the margin.  The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind.  In the front of the book he discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell.  It didn't take long to locate her address -- she lived right there in New York City.  He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond.  The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.

During the next year the two of them grew to know each other through the mail.  Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart.  A romance was budding.  Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused.  She felt that if he really cared about her, it wouldn't matter how she looked like.

When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting -- 7:00 pm at the Grand Central Station in New York.  "You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel."

So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen.  Blanchard wrote about what happened that night:

"A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim.  Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers.  Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive.  I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose.  As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips.  'Going my way, soldier.' she murmured.

"Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell.  She was standing almost directly behind the girl.  A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat.  She was more than plump, her thick-ankles feet thrust into low-heeled shoes.  The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.  I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own.  And there she stood.  Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible; her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle.

"I did not hesitate.  My fingers gripped the small, worn, blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her.  This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful.  I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment.

"'I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell.  I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?'

"The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile.  'I don't know what this is about, son,' she answered, 'but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat.  And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street.  She said it was some kind of test!"

- Wayne Rice, Still More Hot Illustrations For Youth Talks (Christian Literature Crusade, 1999)

Temporary Goodbye

As he reflected on the death of his beloved wife, Margaret, Lyman Coleman wrote the following:

The most painful decision of my life was asking God to take her home. She had been suffering from repeated brain seizures and her body was wasted. I whispered in her ear: “Honey, I love you. I love you. Jesus wants you to come home. We are going to be all right. We give you permission to let go.” She closed her eyes and fell asleep. . . .

As I write this letter, I realize I am without my editor. My greatest critic. My teammate. Soul mate. Prayer mate. Partner in everything. We traveled the roads less traveled together in hard times and good times.

Honey, I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I will keep the light on for the kids. I will be there for friends. And one day we are going to join you. All of us. Because Jesus promised it.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15).

 — Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson, Building a Church of Small Groups (Zondervan, 2001)

Because He Had First Loved Her

Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian, told a story about a certain kingdon wherein there was a handsome prince, searching for a woman worthy enough to be his wife and to become queen of the land.  One day while running an errand for his father he passed through a poor village.  As he glanced out the wondow of his carriage his eyes fell on a beautiful peasant maiden.  During ensuing days, he often passed by the young lady and soon fell in love with her by sight.  But he had a problem.  How could he seek her hand?

He could command her to marry him, but the prince wanted someone who would marry him out of love, not coercion.  He could show up at her door in his splendid uniform in a gold carriage drawn by six horses, attendants in tow, and bearing a chest of jewels and gold coins.  But then how would he know if she really loved him or if she was just overawed and overwhelmed with his splendor?  Finally he came up with another solution.

He stripped off his royal robes, put on common dress, moved into the village, and got to know her without revealing his identity.  As he lived among the people, the prince and the maiden became friends, shared each other's interests, and talked about their concerns.  By and by, the young lady grew to love him for who he was and because he had first loved her.

- Henry Law, The Gospel in Exodus (First Banner of Truth Trust, 1967)