I
don’t know if I've got a good series of stories here or not. I've got two.
There are probably more than two, but I haven’t kept up with this
statistic. A week ago, I would have told
you there’s only one story I tell that makes me cry. Once I told it to you, you would laugh. I’m saving that one for Part II. Stay tuned.
Last
week, I was talking with a group of preschoolers. I consider it continuing ed. They share a little wisdom; I teach them how
to pull their thumbs off.
We were talking about simple
ways to demonstrate “love one another”.
Of course, they already knew plenty of examples, the things grownups
forget too quickly. I told them that one
good thing they could do for other kids who might be afraid or sad was to
simply tell them everything’s going to be all right. Without giving it one thought, I launched
into “The Tornado Story”. The following might
be the long version.
When I was seven years old, I
was in a tornado. OK, I was in a building
which happened to be near where a tornado was going.
I was in my dad’s grocery store,
helping bag groceries. We were right in
the middle of the 4:30 rush, and the sky outside grew dark. It got darker and darker. I started to pay more attention to this than
to how many cans of beans I could neatly stack on top of a sewing room worker’s
bread and eggs. I heard some ladies in
the line talking about the weather report they’d heard on the radio. Somebody said, “Tornado watch.” I looked back out the window. It had gotten really dark. They must have meant “warning”.
There was a sales rack in front
of the huge storefront window. I climbed
up on the bottom shelf to look out over the top of the rack. There was a tall antenna behind the building
across the street. I watched it begin to
sway back and forth, and it didn't take long for all that steel to get really
flexible. Before I could watch it snap
away, my dad picked me up off the shelf.
He set me down behind the counter and called for everyone to get down.
One second later, all the lights
went out. Less than a second after that,
the windows were sucked out of their frames with an incredible blast. The wind filled the whole building with a
roar, and hell came with it (I was going to say “leaves and dirt” but please
indulge me).
At that point, I did what any
average, brave seven year old would, do.
I cried. I screamed, I cried, and
I left it to no one’s imagination to determine if I was scared to death.
Here’s the part where I start to
get a little (a lot) weepy. In the
middle of all that terror, I felt a hand patting me on my arm. I looked up and right in front of me was an
African American boy. He wasn't much
older than I was. I never got his
name. I don’t know who his parents
are. It certainly didn't matter that he
was black and I was white. In that
moment, he was to me exactly what I needed, a friend. He patted me and said, “Everything’s going to
be all right.”
I stopped screaming and
crying. Not long after that, the sky
lightened and the wind went away.
“Everything’s going to be all
right.” It’s a message from the
angels. Sure the gospel writers jazz it
up a little. “Fear not” sells more
Bibles, I guess, but the message itself is one we shouldn't ignore. What happened to us while we were growing up
to cause us to forget that? Or worse,
what happened that caused us to not believe that?
Ever since that December
afternoon way back in nineteen seventy something, I have had my fair share of
things to worry about. Add to that 22
years of doing ministry, and no it hasn't been all sunshine and roses. Actually, my mantra at times has been, “ I've cleaned up the world’s worst clogged up toilet and gotten it running again and
I’ll gladly take the literal task over the figurative any day.” Calling, however, cannot be ignored, and the
Lord expects nothing less than for his followers to get out there and lay down their
lives.
Several of my friends are
currently going through some difficult times.
Some are dealing with health issues in their families or their own
lives. Some are dealing with some Grade
A pain and disappointment (forgive me, trying to keep it a family show). To each of them, I have to say, “Everything’s
going to be all right” is still true. In
the middle of a storm, an angel told me so.
