I'm Coming Down There Myself!

In the play Green Pastures, which ran for many years on Broadway, playwright Marc Connelly has a moving and memorable scene. The Lord is anxiously looking out over the parapets of heaven, trying to decide what to do with the sinful situation on earth. Gabriel enters with his horn tucked under his arm. Sensing the Lord's dilemma, he brushes his lips across the trumpet to keep the feel of it and asks, "Lord, has the time come for me to blow the trumpet?" "No, no," said the Lord, "don't touch the trumpet, not yet." God continues to worry with the problem. Gabriel asks the Lord again what he plans to do. Will he send someone to tend to the situation? Who will it be? Gabriel makes some suggestions. "How about another David or Moses? You could send one of the prophets: Isaiah or Jeremiah. There are lots of great prophets up here. What do you think, Lord?" Without looking back at Gabriel, God said, "I am not going to send anyone. This time I am going myself!!" The Rev. Dr. Thomas Lane Butts, in his sermon, "A Permanent Glimpse of God"

The Lanyard (Mother's Day)

Billy Collins was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2005. The Lanyard BY BILLY COLLINS The other day I was ricocheting slowly off the blue walls of this room, moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano, from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor, when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard. No cookie nibbled by a French novelist could send one into the past more suddenly— a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to braid long thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother. I had never seen anyone use a lanyard or wear one, if that’s what you did with them, but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand again and again until I had made a boxy red and white lanyard for my mother. She gave me life and milk from her breasts, and I gave her a lanyard. She nursed me in many a sick room, lifted spoons of medicine to my lips, laid cold face-cloths on my forehead, and then led me out into the airy light and taught me to walk and swim, and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard. Here are thousands of meals, she said, and here is clothing and a good education. And here is your lanyard, I replied, which I made with a little help from a counselor. Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, strong legs, bones and teeth, and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered, and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp. And here, I wish to say to her now, is a smaller gift—not the worn truth that you can never repay your mother, but the rueful admission that when she took the two-tone lanyard from my hand, I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless thing I wove out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

The Milkmaid and the Holy Man

In the July-September, 2002 edition of Pulpit Resource, Carole Noren relates the story Linda Hutton of Disciples of Christ in Community tells about a milkmaid and a holy man. 

The holy man lived in such a remote place that he relied on her to bring him his daily food and milk. The milkmaid, however, often arrived later than the holy man wanted. One day after he chewed her out for this, she explained why she was perpetually tardy. The milkmaid explained that she had to walk a long way along a river’s bank before she could reach a bridge that would carry her to the river’s other side. So the holy man suggested that she, instead of crossing the bridge, walk across the water. That would save the milkmaid time and perhaps keep her from being late every day. 

From then on the milkmaid was never late. That, however, piqued the holy man’s curiosity. So he asked her how she now consistently managed to arrive so early. “Why, sir,” she answered, “I did as you told me. I walk across the waters of the river.” At this the holy man said, “This I must see. Let me go with you, child, as you return to the village. I believe I can surely walk on water, if someone like you can.” 

When they reached the river, the milkmaid boldly stepped into the water and walked to it other side. When she turned to watch the holy man, he hiked up his robe and stepped into the river. However, after the man took a few hesitant steps he began to sink. So the milkmaid ran back across the waters to help him to shore. 

“What happened?” the shaken holy man asked her. “Well, sir,” she answered, “you said you believed you could walk across the waters, but you gathered up your robes so as not to get the hem wet.”