Too Small to Turn the Door Knob

A Methodist minister tells a pretty story of his little girl, who, wishing to speak to him one day when he was in his study, came up the stairs, and, finding the door closed, put her small hand on the door knob.

The child’s hand was too tiny to grasp the handle firmly enough to turn it. To her delight, however, the handle turned, the door opened, and she ran into the study, exclaiming: ‘Oh, Daddy, I have opened the door all by myself!’

She was all unaware that her father, hearing her trying to open the door, had quietly got up from his chair and turned the handle from the inside.

Thus God helps us when we do our best, and he makes the impossible possible.

Care for the Needy

‘The wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead; and . . . a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.” Elisha said to her, What shall I do for you?”‘ (2 Kings 4:1-2)

Elisha
Many stories are told about the prophets of the Old Testament, and the times they lived in. It’s probably fair to say that compassion wasn’t a common virtue in those bloodthirsty days.

However, there are enough stories told about Elijah, Elisha and other prophets, to show that they regarded the care of the needy, as an important part of their service to God. Today’s Old Testament reading tells about the widow’s jar of oil, or, in the words of the Authorized Version, ‘the widow’s cruse’ — nothing to do with boating holidays! You mustn’t ask, with these traditional miracle stories how the trick was done — the story-tellers weren’t interested in that.

But notice the very opening words. One of the community of prophets had died, and in those days before social security, that meant the widow had no income. Worse still, she owed money to somebody, who threatened, unless she paid up, to take her two children and make them slaves. Result: a life of misery for the children; and guilt and worry for their mother.

Elisha was deeply moved by their predicament, and cut straight to the heart of the problem: ‘What shall I do for you?’ he asked.

Compassion
The key to compassion is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes, and see the problem from their viewpoint. You may hear the statistics of poverty. But until you’ve put flesh on the figures, and thought about the grief of individuals, you haven’t a strong enough motivation forcing you to do anything about it.

God loves the whole world, and every person in it. Thank God, he cares deeply about you and me as unique people. So we, too, must care for the needy like that, seeing the worldwide problems of today in terms of individuals.

Statistics
So here are some statistics for you to think about. They’ve been gleaned them from various sources on the internet, so some may be out of date or inaccurate, but I think they’ll give the general picture.

I suggest you try to imagine what each problem means for one suffering person, or one parent; then try and imagine that pain multiplied by these colossal figures.

Poverty

• People living on less than $10 a day — 80% of the human race.
• People living on less than $1 a day — over 1billion people — a billion is 1000 million.
• The wealthiest 20% of the world’s population account for over three-quarters of the world’s total private consumption.
• The poorest 20% of the world’s population account for 1.5% of the world’s consumption.

Homelessness

• The number of children made homeless because of war over the past ten years is 12 million.

Water

• Inadequate access to water — over 1 billion people.
• Lacking basic sanitation — 2.6 billion people.

Schooling

• Primary age children who never go to school — 72 million.
• People who can’t read or write — nearly 1 billion.
• What would put every child in the world into school — less than 1% of what the world spends every year on weapons.

Deaths

• HIV/AIDS: of over 40 million people in the world presently living with HIV/AIDS, 3 million die each year, and 15 million children are orphaned.
• Tuberculosis: one-third of the people in the world are infected by TB, with 8 million new cases each year, and 2 million die each year.
• Malaria: up to 500 million new cases each year, of whom 1 million die each year.

Child Deaths

• Due to poverty — 25,000 children die each day.
• Due to diarrhoea — nearly 1 million children die each year.
• Each year, 10 million children die before reaching their fifth birthday.

Can we ignore it?
Can we ignore it? If your mind’s boggling, like mine, the temptation is to close our minds, because world poverty’s too big a problem for us to worry about. But in times of recession, when people in rich countries have to forgo some of their luxuries, third-world people are driven to despair, wondering where their next meal’s coming from.

A Story
I want to tell you a story. You may have read it, or heard it, before. I’ve used it a couple of times on my blog. I didn’t write it, though it is written in the first person.

Making a difference
If enough of us start to throw starfish back into the ocean we can make a difference: if enough of us start to do even small things towards helping with the world’s problems we can make a difference.

Don’t be overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task, just concentrate upon the bits that you can effect. It’s all too easy to be overwhelmed, and do nothing; but every little bit can make a difference — especially when added to lots of other little bits.

This week
We’ve seen some of that on the streets of our cities this week. There’s no doubt about it that events of the past week or so have brought to the fore an awful problem in our society. I think it’s going to take us a long time to sort through the myriad reasons for what’s happened. And I don’t intend to try and explain it all here, because I don’t know the answers any more than you do.

But in amongst all of the terrible things that have happened, there have been some positive things too — people not being overwhelmed by the wider problems that none of us can yet explain, but concentrating instead on the bits they can effect.

Some of the most striking images, for me, were of the hundreds of people turning up with brooms to begin the clear up, after their communities were wrecked. I’m sure they were all asking themselves, “Why?” — just like the rest of us. But they put those questions to one side, and concentrated on the bits they could effect, and so helped to bring some hope back to their communities, and the individuals living in them.

The prophets showed us that God has compassion on suffering individuals. Surely we can do no less.

Jonah and the Whale

One day a primary school teacher was talking about Jonah and the whale. He said that it was impossible that a whale had swallowed Jonah as the whale’s throat was simply not big enough.

A young girl disagreed with him saying that the Bible said it had happened so it must be possible.

The discussion went on and both the child and teacher were insistent that they were right.

Finally the girl said that when she got to heaven she would ask Jonah.

The teacher replied, ‘but what if Jonah is not in heaven, but is in hell?’

Immediately the girl replied, ‘In that case you ask him!’

Bell Ringers

A priest is walking down the street one day when he notices a very small boy trying to press a doorbell on a house across the street.

However, the boy is very small and the doorbell is too high for him to reach.

After watching the boy’s efforts for some time, the priest moves closer to the boy’s position. He steps smartly across the street, walks up behind the little fellow and, placing his hand kindly on the child’s shoulder leans over and gives the doorbell a solid ring.

Crouching down to the child’s level, the priest smiles benevolently and asks, “And now what, my little man?”

To which the boy replies, “Now we run!”

How to get to Heaven

“If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into Heaven?” I asked the children in my Sunday School class. “NO!” the children all answered.

“If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the grass, and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into Heaven?” Again, the answer was, “NO!

“Well, then, if I was kind to animals and gave sweets to all the children, and loved my wife, would that get me into Heaven?” I asked them again. Again, they all answered, “NO!”

“Well, I continued, “then how can I get into Heaven?”

A five-year-old boy shouted out, “YOU GOTTA BE DEAD!”

Seeing a child in need

One afternoon a little boy was playing outdoors. He used his mother’s broom as a horse and had a wonderful time until it was getting dark.

He left the broom on the back porch. His mother was cleaning up the kitchen when she realized that her broom was missing. She asked the little boy about the broom and he told her where it was.

She then asked him to please go get it. The little boy informed his mum that he was afraid of the dark and didn’t want to go out to get the broom.

His mother smiled and said ‘The Lord is out there too, don’t be afraid’.

The little boy opened the back door a little and said ‘Lord if you’re out there, hand me the broom’.

A Glass of Water

A small boy is sent to bed by his father.

Five minutes later….”Da-ad….”

“What?”

“I’m thirsty. Can you bring a drink of water?”

“No. You had your chance. Lights out.”

Five minutes later:”Da-aaaad…..”

“WHAT?”

“I’m THIRSTY. Can I have a drink of water??”

“I told you NO!” If you ask again, I’ll have to spank you!!”

Five minutes later……”Daaaa-aaaad…..”

“WHAT!”

“When you come in to spank me, can you bring a drink of water?”

At the Library

I was sitting in my favourite chair, studying for the final stages of my doctoral degree, when Sarah announced herself in my presence with a question: “Daddy, do you want to see my family picture?”

“Sarah, Daddy’s busy. Come back in a little while, Honey.”

Good move, right? I was busy. A week’s worth of work to squeeze into a weekend. You’ve been there.

Ten minutes later she swept back into the living room, “Daddy, let me show you my picture.”

The heat went up around my collar. “Sarah, I said come back later. This is important.”

Three minutes later she stormed into the living room, got three inches from my nose, and barked with all the power a five-year-old could muster: “Do you want to see it or don’t you?” The assertive Christian woman in training.

“NO,” I told her, I DON’T.”

With that she zoomed out of the room and left me alone. And somehow, being alone at that moment wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be. I felt like a jerk. (Don’t agree so loudly.) I went to the front door.

“Sarah,” I called, “could you come back inside a minute, please? Daddy would like to see your picture.”

She obliged with no recriminations, and popped up on my lap.

It was a great picture. She’d even given it a title. Across the top, in her best printing, she had inscribed: “OUR FAMILY BEST.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Here is Mummy [a stick figure with long yellow curly hair], here is me standing by Mommy [with a smiley face], here is our dog Katie, and here is Missy [her little sister was a stick figure lying in the street in front of the house, about three times bigger than anyone else]. It was a pretty good insight into how she saw our family.

“I love your picture, Honey,” I told her. “I’ll hang it on the dining room wall, and each night when I come home from work and from class [which was usually around 10 P.M.], I’m going to look at it.”

She took me at my word, beamed ear to ear, and went outside to play. I went back to my books. But for some reason I kept reading the same paragraph over and over.

Something was making me uneasy.

Something about Sarah’s picture.

Something was missing.

I went to the front door. “Sarah,” I called, “could you come back inside a minute, please? I want to look at your picture again, Honey.”

Sarah crawled back into my lap. I can close my eyes right now and see the way she looked. Cheeks rosy from playing outside. Pigtails. Strawberry Shortcake tennis shoes. A Cabbage Patch doll named Nellie tucked limply under her arm.

I asked my little girl a question, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“Honey…there’s Mummy, and Sarah, and Missy. Katie the dog is in the picture, and the sun, and the house, and squirrels, and birdies. But Sarah…where is your Daddy?”

“You’re at the library,” she said.