One morning while a prisoner at Ravensbruck, Corrie ten Boom awoke with a bad cold. Back in her homeland, with a hankie to use for blowing her nose, she would have easily adjusted to the infirmity. But in the concentration camp, without so much as a hankie, she felt she could not bear her cold and runny nose.
‘Well, why don’t you pray for a hankie?” suggested her sister, Betsie.
Corrie wanted to laugh. There they were imprisoned in a camp where thousands of people each week were being executed or put through unbearable suffering. “And Betsie suggests I pray for a hankie!” she thought. “If I were to pray for anything, it would be for something big not something little like that.”
Betsie, however, immediately and simply prayed: “Father, in the name of Jesus I now pray for a hankie for Corrie, because she has a bad cold.”
Corrie shook her head and walked away. A short while later she was standing by the window of her barracks when she heard someone call her name. Looking out, she spotted a friend and fellow prisoner who worked in the camp’s hospital approaching her.
“Here you are”, the woman said to Corrie in a matter-of-fact tone as she extended a small package to her. “Take it. I bring you a little present.”
Corrie could hardly believe her eyes when she opened the small parcel–it contained a handkerchief!” “How did you know?” she queried. “Did Betsie tell you? Did you know I had a cold?”
The woman shrugged, then revealed, “I know nothing. I was busy sewing handkerchiefs out of an old piece of sheet, and there was a voice in my heart saying, “Take a hankie to Corrie ten Boom.” So, there is your gift, from God.”
O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Psalm 95:1 (KJV)
This is from the book No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton
Hence I do not find in myself the power to be happy merely by doing what I like. On the contrary, if I do nothing except what pleases my own fancy I will be miserable almost all the time. This would never be so if my will had not been created to use its own freedom in the love of others.
There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, as an error which proceedeth from the ruler: Ecclesiastes 10:5 (KJV)
If ever human loves was tender, and self-sacrificing, and devoted; if ever it could bear and forbear; if ever it could suffer gladly of its loved ones; if ever it was willing to pour itself out in a lavish abandonment for the comfort or pleasure of its objects; the infinitely more is Divine love tender, and self-sacrificing, and devoted, and glad to bear and forbear, and to suffer, and to the tenderest love you know of , the deepest you have ever felt, and the strongest that has ever been poured out upon you, and heap upon it all the love of all the loving human hearts in the world, and then multiply it by infinity, and you will being, perhaps, to have some faint glimpse of what the love of God is.
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5 (KJV)
Me: Well here is something for you to think about also.
My Father! What am I , that all
Thy mercies sweet like sunlight fall
So constant o’er my way?
That Thy great love should shelter me,
And guide my steps so tenderly
Through every changing day?
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; 1 John 1:1 (KJV)
It was hard to believe that one week earlier Ryan was at home with his younger brother, Jordan, watching cartoons and eating Popsicles while the two boys recovered from routine cases of chicken pox.
When one large pock behind Ryan’s ear turned red and began to swell, Cheryl and her husband, Jeff, weren’t too worried. But as the swelling continued, they realized something was terribly wrong. Within hours, Ryan’s neck had swollen so much that it pushed his head over against his left shoulder. What’s more, his temperature shot up to 105 degrees. Rushed by ambulance to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Ryan’s condition worsened.
The infection was being caused by streptococcus bacteria, which had invaded one of Ryan’s chicken pox. At that point, the swelling had so severely twisted Ryan’s neck that doctors were afraid it would break and damage his spinal column. Believing the infection had entered Ryan’s bones, doctors wanted to operate so they could scrape the infection from Ryan’s vertebrae and insert pins to hold everything together. Still, they were certain Ryan would not survive the surgery. They also knew he would not survive without surgery. Concluding there was nothing left to do but wait, they fully expected Ryan to die from a broken neck.
Alone with Ryan in his hospital room, Cheryl wept over the realization that her son was dying. There had been another Ryan, years ago, but he’d died too. Ryan Updyke wasn’t actually Cheryl’s brother, but he might as well have been. The little boy had been just three years old–and Cheryl seven–when he became part of her family. The son of Cheryl’s mother’s best friend,a single mom who worked evenings, Ryan spent most afternoons and evenings at Cheryl’s home. When he was sixteen, Ryan was diagnosed with bone cancer. He died eighteen months later.
When Cheryl and Jeff married and had their first baby, they named him after the “little brother” Cheryl had loved and lost. Cheryl’s son didn’t know about the young man whose name he shared. She had been looking forward to telling him about the older Ryan one day. Now it seemed that day would never come. And yet it felt like hope was draining away with every passing hour.
Cheryl saw Jeff’s Bible lying on a nearby table. Picking it up, she read Psalm 91:11: “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. “Sobbing, she began to pray. Through her tears, she prayed, “Lord, send four of Your angels to guard the four corners of this room. Watch over my son, protect him, comfort him if he’s in any pain, and guide him home to you if he’s not going to stay here with us.”
The following night, it was Cheryl’s turn to stay home with Jordan while Jeff spent the night by Ryan’s side. The next morning, Cheryl phoned Jeff. She could hardly utter the words “Good morning” before her husband said, “You need to get down here right away.”
When Cheryl walked into Ryan’s hospital room, he opened his eyes–mere slits in his still-swollen face–and called out, “Hi, Mommy!” Ryan’s doctor turned to Jeff and Cheryl and said, “Well things are turning around. Thank God we didn’t take him into surgery! Let’s just see how he does.” Ryan’s swelling continued to subside by the hour. He was still weak, but recovering quickly.
One day when he’d been home about a week, Cheryl said, “Ryan, you were so, so sick!” They talked about his stay in the hospital. She was thankful he remembered nothing from the first ten days when he was either in excruciating pain or unconscious.
“I prayed for you, Ryan,” his mother said. “I prayed for angels to watch over you and help you not feel bad.”
“Yeah, I know,” he answered.
She looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean, you know?”
“I know,” he said. “I saw the angels.”
Cheryl glanced at her son. “Really? Where were the angels, Ryan? What did they look like?”
Ryan said matter-of-factly, “They were standing in the corners of the room. And flying around too. There were mommy and daddy ones, and baby ones and grandma and grandpa ones. They were yellow and white and really pretty.”
Cheryl didn’t know what to think. She half-believed him. Then again, maybe through his coma, he’d heard her praying. “I had a dream too,” Ryan said as he hopped around the table. “About Jesus. We were planting stuff in a garden. He said I was a good boy and that He loved me.” She looked at her son in wonder. “That’s interesting. Anything else?” Ryan was getting fidgety now. He’d sat for too long and was ready to play.
He started skipping toward the door. Cheryl turned back to her mirror. But he stopped and said over his shoulder, “Oh yeah. Ryan says “Hi.”
1 John 4:13-15
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
This is from the book No Man Is an Island by Thomas Merton
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effort upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration, centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god. But this is impossible. Is there any more cogent indication of my creaturehood than the insufficiency of my own will? For I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me. When I give it pleasure, it deceives my expectation and makes me suffer pain. When I give myself what I conceive to be freedom, I deceive myself and find that I am the prisoner of my own blindness and selfishness and insufficiency.
And it came to pass on the day that Moses had fully set up the tabernacle, and had anointed it, and sanctified it, and all the instruments thereof, both the altar and all the vessels thereof, and had anointed them, and sanctified them; Numbers 7:1 (KJV)
Me: Well, we will see, sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes it is no.
This is from the book No Man Is An Island by Thomas Merton
Those who abandon everything in order to seek God know well that He is the God of the poor. It is the same thing to say that He is the God of the poor and that He is a jealous God–to say that He is a jealous God and a God of infinite mercy. There are not two Gods, one jealous, Whom we must fear, and one merciful, in Whom we must place our hope. Our hope does not consist in pitting one of these gods against the other, bribing one to pacify the other. The Lord of all justice is jealous of His prerogative as the Father of mercy, and the supreme expression of His justice is to forgive those whom no one else would ever have forgiven.
That is why He is, above all, the God of those who can hope where there is no hope. The penitent thief who died with Christ was able to see God where the doctors of the law had just proved impossible Jesus’s claim to divinity.
That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5:21 (KJV)
Me: I have a thought that we can hold on to today.
Prodigal: I am ready to listen.
Me: The Lord has defended you in battles you don’t even know about.
This is from Julia Tinkey
There’s something about a hospital in the dead of night that is different from anything else–muted sighs and stirrings, the light from the nurse’s station at the end of the floor.
I sat by Mother’s bed, watching. There wasn’t much else I could do. Jean Hudson, the night nurse, was in and out, checking Mother’s pulse and blood pressure.
In fact, as the minutes crawled past, I grew more and more sensitive to the impulse that had made me leave my husband and our three children asleep and drive to the hospital at midnight. We’d known for six weeks that Mother was dying. Ever since surgery had revealed inoperable cancer, I’d spent part of each day at her side. This night I had to be with her.
It was true, the last few days she’d been failing rapidly, in much pain, drifting in and out of a coma. Several times the doctor had been on the verge of telling her that further treatment was useless–but we all hesitated. All her life Mother had been such an active person, teaching at the high school, running the farm, doing office work for dad’s pulpwood business, raising five children, and cheerfully taking on jobs at church. To be able to fight now, however vainly, we felt was important to her.
She still had not moved nor opened her eyes since I arrived. I repeated again the prayer I had said so often in that room. It was that Mother not have to go with drugs numbing that close harmony of mind to mind and heart to heart we had always had in our family. As I had done daily the past six weeks, I prayed that Mother–who had served God so faithfully these seventy years—be allowed to come to Him in dignity and acceptance and peace.
“Julia!” Mother stirred on the bed, “Are you there, Julia?”
I assured her that I was, and she asked me to come closer. She wanted to apologize, she said, for having been so difficult (which of course she hadn’t).
Her eyes opened; they looked straight into mine. “The doctor told me. And, Julia, it’s all right. I’ve left it up to God. I’m in God’s hands now, and it is so wonderful.”
As she was saying this, she seemed bathed in light. As I stared at her, the mysterious radiance enveloped me as well; I felt as if I were drowning in the love and joy on her face.
I realized that she was smiling and I smiled back–but I could not express this awareness enough through smiles; it seemed that my body must burst with the fullness of that instant.
The instant stretched into minutes and the minutes into almost an hour as we looked at each other, exposed and filled with the living presence of God. I felt that Mother was seeing a world beyond the physical one, and that I was almost there with her.
I said to her, “Do you mean, Mother, that you see God?” and she answered, “Yes, Julia, face to face, and it is so important that everyone know. Tell Murray, Carol, Miriam, George,” naming my brothers and sisters. “It’s so wonderful!”
She seemed so alert, so like her former self that in frustration I almost shouted at her. “What’s so wonderful? Tell me!”
“Millions and millions of people,” she began slowly. “So many millions….and all on different levels. There’s light….light everywhere….so much light!”
Her eyes seemed so full of love and they never left mine. Her voice remained strong as she continued. “Things get between us and God. Tell them all not to let things separate them from God. I’ve been so concerned with my own little problems and desires. Tell them, Julia–the glory of the Lord–it is wonderful!”
They were the last words that Mother spoke. Her eyes closed, but the smile did not fade.
Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not. Galatians 1:20 (KJV)
If content and thankfulness, if the patient bearing of evil, be duties to God, they are the duties of everyday, and in every circumstance of our life. If we are to follow Christ, it must be in our common way of spending every day.
They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye are our gods. Isaiah 42:17 (KJV)
