Devotions Archive
Remember your own story
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Deuteronomy 4:9
Moses said to the people, "Take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children's children."
When she returned from Israel, my friend Brenda gave us a Mezuzah to put in our doorway. Contained inside it are the words of the "Shema Yisrael," which begins "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One!"
Above all, Moses says - remember.
How does God move in my life, shape me, mold me, make me new? There are many stories. A book like Remembering Your Story can help each of us put stories about the living God in our lives into our own "mezuzah".
Here are two of my stories, which I shared with my niece's daughter as she writes about her great-grandparents (my parents) this week:
Dear Grace,
I will tell you two stories about your great-grandparents. There are many more.
In 1976 I joined a church that had a bad reputation. It was called the Unification Church and was led by a pastor named Rev. Sun Myung Moon from Korea. I spent two years with some of the people in that church. We lived together and gave all our possessions to the church. For me, it changed my life and I realized how much God loved me.
But in 1978 some things happened, and I needed to leave. I had been in England for the summer, and now I was at the Unification Church Seminary in upstate New York, ready to begin school.
One of those fall days I was in Manhattan to see my best friend in the church. The train back to the seminary left from Grand Central Station. In those days Kodak put a huge family picture on the wall, a rectangle probably 40 feet x 60 feet. Big smiles, sweet family.
I stepped into a phone booth (yeah, really, a phone booth!), and called my mom. Your great-grandma. I knew their phone number, partly because it was the same number they had for ... what? Twenty years? Maybe longer? It is the phone number they STILL have, by the way. For me, knowing that number was still the same felt solid and strong, which was NOT the way I was feeling in the rest of my life.
My cousin Sherrill Sandel was getting married in Rhode Island in a week or so. Mom and Dad had told me they were planning to go. I asked Mom if their plans were still the same, and she told me they were getting busy with harvest and decided not to come to the wedding
That was disappointing to me. I told her I was thinking I would come home after the wedding. There was a second of silence. Then Mom said -Well, we will be there. And I started to cry. Under that Kodak mural, I felt the love of my family fall down all over me.
I had only been home once in two years, when Grandpa Sandel (your great-GREAT-grandpa) died. And I was there for two days or something, and then off again. But this time I stayed.
Mom and I had stayed in touch, talking on the telephone every couple of weeks. We argued a lot about how to think about God, but we kept talking. And when I saw Mom and Dad in Rhode Island, it was one of the wonderful moments of my life.
The second story is about my dad, your great-grandpa. About 10 years before he died, we decided to take a trip each year, just the two of us. We went to the Billy Graham Retreat Center in Asheville, North Carolina. We also went to the Lutheran Church National Charismatic Conference in Minneapolis. We went to a bluegrass concert.
The last trip we took was to Old World Wisconsin, a kind-of theme park which celebrated lots of old-time farming practices in one place. I remember they were roasting a pig in one place in the park.
We stayed at the summer home of some friends. Their house is on a lake, which can only be reached down a long stairway. After we got back from the park, I went swimming. While I was in the water, I saw Dad walking down the stairs, and then out onto the dock, and he got in the water. Seems like such a little thing. But it was big to him.
Wide smile on his face. By that time, he could not walk very well. His illness bent him over, and his posture was pretty crooked. I know he had no been swimming for many many years. And there he was.
He never went swimming again. But he did that day, and I was so glad to be there.
As I write I realize the stories go on and on. Hope you enjoyed these two, Grace. God bless you!
Uncle Dave
We glorify and praise you, Lord. You have strengthened us and blessed our children within our gates. You send forth your command to the earth, and you spread snow like wool. Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life; you have the words of everlasting life.
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