True love story

"For You knew that Heaven’s touch

On this poor world would mean so much
So You lived and died, and rose to glory
To begin life’s deepest true love story"
-Bonita Hele

In One Blinding Moment

My favorite Christmas stories this season Part 2

I'm sorry this story is a bit long, but it's worth the read! It made me think a lot. It touched my heart, it convicted me and also washed my vision. It made me think about my past, present and future. And it ended up making me cry out of thankfulness for love, and shame. Jesus, forgive me.
I'll let you read now.

By Max Ellerbusch

It was a busy Friday, six days before Christmas. I was in my instrument repair shop, working feverishly so that I could have all of the Christmas holiday at home with my family. Then the phone rang and a voice was saying that our five-year-old Craig had been hit by a car.
There was a crowd standing around him by the time I got there, but they stepped back for me. Craig was lying in the middle of the road; his curly blond hair was not even rumpled.
He died at Children’s Hospital that afternoon.
There were many witnesses. It had happened at the school crossing. They told us that Craig had waited on the curb until the safety-patrol boy signaled him to cross. Craig, how well you remembered! How often your mother called after you as you started off for kindergarten, “Don’t cross until you get the signal!” You didn’t forget!
The signal came, Craig stepped into the street. The car came so fast no one had seen it. The patrol boy shouted, waved, had to jump for his own life. The car never stopped.
Grace and I drove home from the hospital through the Christmas-lighted streets, not believing what had happened to us. It wasn’t until the night, passing the unused bed, that I knew. Suddenly I was crying, not just for that empty bed but for the emptiness, the seeming senselessness of it. All night long, with Grace awake beside me, I searched what I knew of life for some hint of a loving God at work in it, and found none.
As a child I certainly had been led to expect none. My father used to say that in all his childhood he did not experience one act of charity or Christian kindness. Father was an orphan, growing up in 19th-century Germany, a supposedly Christian land. Orphans were rented out to farmers as machines are rented today, and treated with far less consideration. He grew into a stern, brooding man who looked upon life as an unassisted journey to the grave.
He married another orphan and, as their own children started to come, they decided to emigrate to America. Father got a job aboard a ship; in New York harbor he went ashore and simply kept going. He stopped in Cincinnati where so many Germans were then settling. He took every job he could find, and in a year and a half had saved enough money to send for his family.
On the boat coming over, two of my sisters contracted scarlet fever; they died on Ellis Island. Something in Mother died with them, for from that day on she showed no affection for any living being. I grew up in a silent house, without laughter, without faith.
Later, in my own married life, I was determined not to allow these grim shadows to fall on our own children. Grace and I had four: Diane, Michael, Craig, and Ruth Carol. It was Craig, even more than the others, who seemed to lay low my childhood pessimism, to tell me that the world was a wonderful purposeful place. As a baby he would smile so delightedly at everyone he saw that there was always a little group around his carriage. When we went visiting it was Craig, three years old, who would run to the hostess to say, “You have a lovely house!” If he received a gift he was touched to tears, and then gave it away to the first child who envied it. Sunday morning when Grace dressed to sing in the choir, it was Craig who never forgot to say, “You’re beautiful.”
And if such a child can die, I thought as I struggled, lying in my bed that Friday night, if such a life can be snuffed out in a minute, then life is meaningless and faith in God is self-delusion. By morning my hopelessness and helplessness had found a target, a blinding hatred for the person who had done this to us. That morning police picked him up in Tennessee: George Williams. Fifteen years old.
He came from a broken home, police learned. His mother worked a night shift and slept during the day. Friday he had cut school, taken her car keys while she was asleep, sped down a street. … All my rage at a senseless universe seemed to focus on the name George Williams. I phoned our lawyer and begged him to prosecute Williams to the limit. “Get him tried as an adult. Juvenile court’s not tough enough.”
So this was my frame of mind when the thing occurred which changed my life. I cannot explain it; I can only describe it.
It happened in the space of time that it takes to walk two steps. It was late Saturday night. I was pacing the hall outside our bedroom, my head in my hands. I felt sick and dizzy, and tired, so tired. “Oh God,” I prayed, “show me why!”
Right then, between that step and the next, my life was changed. The breath went out of me in a great sigh—and with it all my sickness. In its place was a feeling of love and joy so strong it was almost pain.
Other men have called it the “the presence of Christ.” I’d known the phrase, of course, but I’d thought it was some abstract, theological idea. I never dreamed it was Someone, an actual Person, filling that narrow hall with love.
It was the suddenness of it that dazed me. It was like a lightning stroke that turned out to be the dawn. I stood blinking in an unfamiliar light. Vengefulness, grief, hate, anger—it was not that I struggled to be rid of them—like goblins imagined in the dark, in the morning’s light they simply were not there.
And all the while I had the extraordinary feeling that I was two people. I had another self, a self that was millions of miles from that hall, learning things men don’t yet have words to express. I have tried so often to remember the things I knew then, but the learning seemed to take place in a mind apart from the one I ordinarily think with, as though the answer to my question was too vast for my small intellect. But, in that mind beyond logic, that question was answered. In that instant I knew why Craig had to leave us. Though I had no visual sensation, I knew afterward that I had met him, and he was wiser than I, so that I was the little boy and he the man. And he was so busy. Craig has so much to do, unimaginably important things into which I must not inquire. My concerns were still on earth.
In the clarity of the moment, it came to me: This life is a simple thing! I remember the very words in which the thought came. “Life is a grade in school. In this grade we must learn only one lesson: We must establish relationships of love.”
Oh, Craig, I thought. Little Craig, in your five short years how fast you learned, how quickly you progressed, how soon you graduated!
I don’t know how long I stood there in the hall. Perhaps it was no time at all as we ordinarily measure things. Grace was sitting up in bed when I reached the door of our room. Not reading, not doing anything, just looking straight ahead of her as she had much of the time since Friday afternoon.
Even my appearance must have changed, because as she turned her eyes slowly to me she gave a little gasp and sat up straighter. I started to talk, words tumbling over each other, laughing, eager, trying to say that the world was not an accident, that life meant something, that earthly tragedy was not the end, that all around our incompleteness was a universe of purpose, that the purpose was good beyond our furthest hopes.
“Tonight,” I told her, “Craig is beyond needing us. Someone else needs us. George Williams. It’s almost Christmas. Maybe, at the Juvenile Detention Home, there’ll be no Christmas gift for him unless we send it.”
Grace listened, silent, unmoving, staring at me. Suddenly she burst into tears.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s right, that’s right. It’s the first thing that’s been right since Craig died.”
And it has been right. George turned out to be an intelligent, confused, desperately lonely boy, needing a father as much as I needed a son. He got his gift, Christmas Day, and his mother got a box of Grace’s good Christmas cookies. We asked for and got his release, a few days later, and this house became his second home. He works with me in the shop after school, joins us for meals around the kitchen table, is a big brother for Diane and Michael and Ruth Carol.
But more was changed, in that moment when I met Christ, than just my feeling about George. That meeting has affected every phase of my life, my approach to business, to friends, to strangers. I don’t mean I’ve been able to sustain the ecstasy of that moment; I doubt that the human body could contain such a joy for very many days.
But I know with the infinite sureness that no matter what life does to us in the future, I will never again touch the rock bottom of despair. No matter how ultimate the blow seems, I glimpsed an even more ultimate joy that blinding moment when the door swung wide.

What about Mary?

I was looking at the manger scene and I thought: "What about Mary? Imagine how things must've been for her...My lord! She was just a teen! I remember researchers saying that she could've been from fifteteen to seventeen years old when she got engaged! How did the responsibility of raising Jesus feel for her?" -wide eyes-
That left me with something to think about and to parallel with my own life.
If it were me, I know I'd freak out at all that I'd have to do and be in order to become a good mother and set the right example for Jesus. I'm sure Mary did an amazing job though, imperfect and human as she was. She was picked out from all the women of the Earth for a reason. I can imagine Mary's tears, sweat and smiles; her effort to do the best she could and the love God had placed in her heart so that she would give it out and let it spill on others. She had the Son of God to love, as well as her fellow men.
And I know that as a human, she also must've failed, like any of us. It's also a fact she was young, quite young when she was given the biggest responsibility a woman could ever have.
Then I thought about my struggle with feeling incapable and giving myself reasons of why I can't do things, why I'm not prepared, how my experience and knowledge are insufficient. These things are true though, I am insufficient, I don't know what to do or how to go about doing things. The point is that all of that doesn't matter. Contrary to logic, Jesus can use that to do anything!
Actually there's logic there: when there's less of ourselves, there's more space for Jesus to fill, take over and use to accomplish His purposes.
My mind's favorite excuses are: "I'm too young", "I have no experience", "I won't do it right" and "I'll fail". But that's because my fears are completely afraid of drowning, burning, dying and passing into oblivion as steps forward are made.
This past year I found out I can do things I thought I couldn't, and do them right! I also fail, but I can get up! I can reach my full potential and I can do the things I don't feel prepared to do, simply because if they're in front of me it means God has sent them for a reason and He's been preparing me for them.
I don't know what's ahead. I just don't want to put limitations on what I'll do and what opportunities I'll take on. I don't care if I feel small and incapable and if I must face my fears to conquer them. I don't care if the world seems to be closing in on me when I'm in the middle of a struggle, fighting for success. I'll do the best I can, that's my job. And I'll let Jesus do all that I can't, that's His job.
As far of fear of failure goes, He and I are burning that one down together.
I'd like to tell you that this last year I had the privilege of meeting glowing individuals! I watched them shine, fill the need, lead a crowd, do things they had never done before and were afraid of doing! They rose to meet the challenges in front of them. And let me tell you, it didn't matter their age! Although some were years younger than me -smiles-, you know who you are.
How many excuses we come up with doesn't really matter. We'll always have to fight them to get to where we're meant to. They're just that, "excuses" -even if I like calling them reasons.
We can't let excuses keep our potential locked in, keep us from doing all we could, keep us from meeting the people God wants us to, keep us from helping someone else. Most of all, we can't let excuses keep us from fulfilling our destiny and living a full life!
What can a young boy or girl do?
One thing is for sure, Jesus has always used the foolish things of this world.
With Jesus, we have the possibility of doing anything!

Surprise Ending

My favorite Christmas stories this season Part 1

By Irene B. Harrell

I turned up the fur collar of my coat against a near-freezing wind as I stepped from our warm station wagon into the bare dirt of a front yard on the outskirts of town. Our adult Sunday school class had chosen the address from a Salvation Army list in the evening paper, and my husband and I had driven out to meet the family. The idea was to find out their immediate needs so that we could provide a merry Christmas for them, and then, more importantly, to work with them throughout the year to try to make a real difference, a Christian difference, in their lives.
We had asked God to guide us to the right family, but now it looked as though the house we had chosen was going to be empty. No smoke came from the chimney, and in the front door there was only a hole where a knob and a lock might have been, once. But when we knocked, the rag of curtain at the window moved and a small face peered out. A minute passed and then the door was opened by a boy about eight years old.
“Hello,” I said. “Is your mother home?”
“Mama not home,” he announced gravely. “She workin’.”
“Well, ah—is any grownup here with you?”
He shook his head.
“Let’s step in for a minute,” my husband suggested. “The house’ll get cold with the door standing open.” The boy moved shyly back and we entered the tiny room.
I’ll never forget what we saw. There was a bed, sagging to the floor, the mattress oozing stuffing at every rip and seam. No sheets, no blankets. A small chest of drawers in the corner held a dusty glass punch bowl with cups hanging around the rim. A Bible lay beside it. On the floor a chipped enamel pan held some lumps of corn meal mush the children had been eating in fistfuls. The black wood stove was icy cold.
The boy who had let us in now stood protectively between two smaller children, a boy and a girl. The girl’s oversized slacks were held together by a safety pin. All three youngsters were barefoot.
And there was a baby. He was lying on a pile of straw and rags that had once been an upholstered chair. He was wearing the remnant of an undershirt and a diaper that hadn’t been changed in a long time.
I thought of my own children and my baby in her lovely birch crib with its clean white sheets and I started to cry. I’d never really seen poverty before.
That afternoon we went back with blankets, shoes, diapers, food, and clothes. Again, the mother was not there. But apparently she’d been home long enough to build them a blazing fire, so hot the children had the front door standing wide open. A coalscuttle held scraps of linoleum from a pile of debris in the yard next door.
The next day we finally found the mother at home. Her name was Virginia and the children, in order of age, were Arthur Lee, Violet, Danny, and the baby David Ray. Virginia was a tiny woman in a yellow bouffant organdy dress. She answered our questions quietly and was not offended that we had come to help.
What did she need most? A refrigerator so the baby’s milk wouldn’t sour, and something for a stove that wouldn’t burn as fast as linoleum.
The class found a refrigerator, a bed, a crib, several chairs, sheets, more blankets. On Christmas, there were toys for the children and clothes and food for everyone. The wood stove was replaced by an oil heater that would not go out while the mother was away. The class pledged the money to pay the oil bills for the coming year.
The family’s immediate physical needs had been relatively easy to satisfy. But what about the Christian difference?
Every week or two my husband and I would go to see Virginia and her family. Sometimes we’d carry hand-me-downs, or groceries, or books, sometimes we’d go empty-handed, just to visit. But she always gave us the same warm greeting. I remember the pride with which she invited me to sit down. She hadn’t been able to exercise that kind of courtesy before, when she had no chairs.
Frequently, our four other children went along with us on these visits, and occasionally we took the baby. I had to explain to Virginia about our baby. German measles during my pregnancy had left little Marguerite deaf. When I told Virginia that the doctors said nothing could be done about it, I could see she was deeply affected.
On our next visit she greeted us with shining eyes. “Oh, Mrs. Harrell,” she said, “I believe God is going to make your baby hear! Don’t you feel it too? Can’t she already hear a lot better than she could? I’ve been praying so hard ever since you told me. I know she’s going to hear!”
I just smiled at Virginia. She didn’t know as much about science as I did. I couldn’t expect her to understand that nerve deafness was not curable. Of course, I had prayed for my child; but my prayers had been ones of thankfulness for her, not prayers for healing. I took the doctor’s words as final.
Marguerite was almost a year old when we first noticed the change in her. For a while we couldn’t believe it ourselves, but at last we became convinced that she really was hearing certain loud sounds. When we took her back to the hearing clinic for testing, there was no doubt about it. Our daughter, whose nerve deafness had been pronounced complete and incurable, had begun to hear! In four short months her diagnosis had changed from “profoundly deaf” to “moderately to severely hard of hearing.”
The doctors were amazed, but Virginia wasn’t even surprised. “God did it, Mrs. Harrell. Didn’t I ask Him for an icebox and a good stove, and didn’t He give them to me? There’s nothing He can’t do, if we just ask Him.”
I stared at her, trying to understand faith like this, reaching out my own feeble portion to try to take hold of hers.
“Mrs. Harrell,” she said, “I’m going to keep on praying for that baby.”
“Yes!” I whispered, “Please keep praying. Don’t ever stop.”
It worked, you see, our Christmas project; it even accomplished the “Christian difference.” Of course, the difference was in our lives, not just in Virginia’s. But then, we’d asked God to guide us to the poor, and He generally knows where they are.

~~~
Even though I cry to think of the state they were in,
I think: "What a rich woman having that kind of faith!"

The Christmas tree

I felt sheer joy to reflect on this. I realized that these could be my words and felt happier yet to think of all who can say the same! I love you!

"A Christmas tree! What a beautiful sight! But what does it mean to me? I wondered, as I gazed at the Yuletide display before me.
The evergreen tree—it symbolizes Jesus, who lives in my heart for good. He never dies away in the winter of my difficulties, but is always with me.
The star on the tip-top of the tree is like that unforgettable star that lit the way to the first humble home of my Savior two thousand years ago. It also reminds me to always look up, that there’s always a shining star of hope, even in my darkest nights.
The baubles and pretty decorations are the good, happy things that fill my life with spice and delight. I don’t take time as often as I should to thank God for all my blessings, or even for the sad things and the hard times that have made me into the person that I am today. Life wouldn’t be life without both joy and sadness, the good and the bad.
The colorful string of lights reminds me of the things God does to light my way through life. “His Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” I never need feel alone.
And last but not least, the presents under the Christmas tree symbolize my gifts to Jesus. It’s His birthday, after all. The most meaningful gifts are gifts of love—time, friendship, company, giving, forgiveness, and understanding. I give Him gifts each time I give from my heart to others.
The heart of Christmas is not in the presents we give, but the love that we share. This is what makes Christmas."—Amanda White

Sweet Estie, Happy Birthday!!

You make me feel so proud of you, I'm proud to have a friend like you.
You're fighting to make the world around you a better place, you give of yourself and your time to others, you love Jesus first and foremost and you walk on the water with Him. You're in love, you're willing to help, you're a servant just like Jesus, you're a comforter, you're an amazing woman and a sweet, sweet friend.
You mean more to people than you know. You're an angel in disguise, carrying her guitar, lighting candles in other's hearts. You mean more to me than you know. I admire you for sailing out into the unknown, for being a visionary, for doing it for love.
I bet this is going to be the most exciting year of your life yet! You have soo much to look forward to!
From the moment you first blinked you've found treasures along the path of your life and given soo much Love! Thank you for all that love you give Sweetie. It translates into prayers answered, miracles, strength, happiness, protection, fulfillment, health in the lives of others. Cause of that and so much more is Heaven laded with blessings, riches and awesomeness to give you and reward you with! And honey, you're only 18!
I'm so happy to have met you that one time passing by your house in Querétaro. You helped me feel less of a weird bug, sat with me when my stomach was aching, made sure my tea had no sugar, and talked and talked with me.
And just recently we were sitting in a red van with my dad at the wheel, catching up on each other's lives a bit. I remember you looked beautiful and how you matched perfectly with the day! It was bliss to have you there, how you shared your experiences with me, and treasures you've gained by walking alongside Jesus. We hadn't slept much at all and you still managed to look beautiful, why? Cause you simply are! No other explanation! -smiles-
I love you very much my dear and I'm excited about your new year and the adventures that await you, starting today. New grand things! It doesn't matter if some start small. Look at Jesus born in a stable.
My, you're awesome! I wish you the happiest year of your life yet! And I pray you have at every moment everything you need and love in your heart that never dies. Thank you for being such a champ, for not giving up, for carrying on, for wanting to be more like Jesus every day! Estie, you inspire me.