Barnabas Ministries UK

Rev. E. Anderson

LITTLE FLOWER

James McCutcheon

Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II. He was called by adoring New Yorkers “the Little Flower” because he was only five-foot-four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.

One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. “It’s a bad neighborhood, your Honor,” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be pun­ished to teach other people around here a lesson.”

LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions-ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sen­tence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying:

“Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for liv­ing in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines ~ them to the defendant.”

So the following day the New York City new reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving gran­dchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

Touched by a loving heart,

Wakened by kindness

Chords that were broken,

                                   Wi1l vibrate once more.           Fanny Crosby

Rev. E. Anderson

LESSON FROM A SON

My son Daniel’s passion for surfing began at the age of 13. Before and after school each day, he donned his wet suit, paddled out beyond the surf line and waited to be challenged by his three- to six-foot companions. Daniel’s love of the ride was tested one fateful afternoon.

‘Your son’s been in an accident,” the lifeguard reported over the phone to my husband Mike.

“How Bad?”

When he surfaced to the top of the water, the point of the board was headed toward his eye.

Mike rushed him to the emergency room and they were then sent to a plastic surgeon’s office. He received 26 stitches from the corner of his eye to the bridge of his nose.

I was on an airplane flying home from a speaking engagement while Dan’s eye was being stitched. Mike drove directly to the airport after they left the doctor’s office. He greeted me at the gate and told me Dan was waiting in the car.

“Daniel?” I questioned. I remember thinking the waves must have been lousy that day.

He’s been in an accident, but he’s going to be fine.”

A traveling working mother’s worst nightmare had come true. I ran to the car so fast the heel of my shoe broke off. I swung open the door, and my youngest son with the patched eye was leaning forward with both arms stretched out toward me crying’ Oh, Ma, I’m so glad you’re home.”

I sobbed in his arms telling him how awful I felt about not being there when the lifeguard called.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he comforted me. You don’t know how to surf anyway.”

“What?” I asked, confused by his logic.

“I’ll be fine. The doctor says I can go back in the water ‘in eight days.”

Was he out of his mind? I wanted to tell him he wasn’t allowed to go near water again until he was 35, but instead I bit my tongue and prayed he would forget about surfing forevermore.

For the next seven days he kept pressing me to let him go back on the board. One day after I emphatically repeated “No” to him for the 100th time, he beat me at my own game.

“Mom, you taught us never to give up what we love.”

Then he handed me a bribe-a framed poem by Langston Hughes that he bought “because it reminded me of you.”

Mother To Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it.

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor -

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So, boy, don’t you turn back,

Don’t you set down on the steps

‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now­  -

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

I gave in

.

Back then Daniel was a just a boy with a passion for surfing. Now he’s a man with a responsibility. He ranks among the top 25 pro surfers in the world.

I was tested in my own backyard on an important principle that I teach audiences in distant cities:

“Passionate people embrace what they love and never give up.

Danielle Kennedy

Rev. E. Anderson

THE LAST “I LOVE YOU”

Debbi Smoot

Carol’s husband was killed in an accident last year. Jim, only 52, was driving home from work. The other driver was a teenager with a very high blood-alcohol level. Jim died instantly. The teenager was in the emergency room for less than two hours.

There were other ironic twists: It was Carol’s fiftieth birth-day, and Jim had two plane tickets to Hawaii in his pocket. He was going to surprise her. Instead, he was killed by a drunk dri­ver.

“How have you survived this?” I finally asked Carol, a year later.

Her eyes welled up with tears. I thought I had said the wrong thing, but she gently took my hand and said, “It’s all right, I want to tell you. The day I married Jim, I promised I would never let him leave the house in the morning without telling him I loved him. He made the same promise. It got to be a joke between us, and as babies came along it got to be a hard promise to keep. I remember running down the driveway, say­ing ‘I love you’ through teeth clenched when I was mad, or dri­ving to the office to put a note in his car. It was a funny chal­lenge.

“We made a lot of memories trying to say ‘I love you’ before noon every day of our married life.

“The morning Jim died, he left a birthday card in the kitchen and slipped out to the car. I heard the engine starting. Oh, no, you don’t buster, I thought. I raced out and banged on the car window until he rolled it down. ‘Here on my fiftieth birthday, Mr. James E. Garret, I, Carol Garret, want to go on record as saying I love you!’

“That’s how I’ve survived. Knowing that the last words I aid to Jim were, ‘I LOVE YOU!”‘

Love never asks how much must I do,

but how much can I do.

Frederick A. Agar

Rev. E. Anderson

MICHAEL’S  STORY BEGINS

At Age Six                             Charlotte Elmore

In desperation, I asked if he could be retested. She shook her head and said no. In an attempt to show her just how “normal” Michael really was, I began telling her about all the things that Michael did well. But she brushed my comments aside and stood up, dismissing me. “Michael will be all right,” she said.

Later that evening, after Michael and his three-year old sis­ter, Linda, were in bed, I tearfully told Frank what I had le&ned that day. After talking it over, we agreed that we knew our son much better than an IQ test. We decided that Michael’s low score must have been a mistake.

Like me, Frank could not believe that our son was “nearly retarded.” Instead, he told me about some of the things Michael recently had done that he felt proved Michael was intelligent…. He said that one night Michael showed an interest in the blue print sketches he was working on, so he found Michael’s set of odd-shaped blocks and quickly sketched two dimensional draw­ings of each of them; Frank then asked Michael to match each block with its corresponding drawing. Frank said he was pleased with how easily Michael made things with his toy construction sets from the diagrams that came with the toys.

We moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 1962, and Michael entered Concordia Lutheran High School. His grades warranted his selecting college preparatory courses, including biology, Latin, and algebra-the subject we had been told, when he was back in first grade, he would never be able to handle. Biology soon became his favorite subject. He started telling everyone he was going to be a doctor.

Michael entered Indiana University at Bloomington in 1%5 as a premedical student. By midyear, with a 3.47 grade point average, he had made the dean’s list, and his faculty counselor gave him special permission to take more than the recommended number of course hours. He earned enough credits to be accepted into the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis at the end of his junior year in col­lege.

During his first year at medical school, Michael took another IQ test and scored 126, an increase of 36 points. An increase like that was supposed to be impossible.

On graduation day, May 21, 1972, Frank, Linda, and I attended the ceremony and hugged our Dr. Mike! After the ceremony, we told Michael and Linda about the low IQ score Michael had received when he was six-as we had planned to do all along. At first, both of them thought we were joking. Since that day, Michael sometimes will look at us and say with a big grin, “My parents never told me that I couldn’t be a doc­tor-that is, not until after I graduated from medical school!” It’s his way of thanking us for the faith we had in him.

It has been said that children often live up to what adults expect of them-tell a child he is “dumb” and he may play the part. We often wonder what would have happened if we had treated Michael as “nearly retarded” and imposed a limit on his dreams.

Rev. E. Anderson

A SIMPLE GESTURE

‘Everybody can be great……. because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love’    -    Martin Luther King, Jr

Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all of the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder. Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles. Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked Mark discov­ered the boy’s name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history that he was having a lot of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

They arrived at Bill’s home first and Mark was invited in for a Coke and to watch some television. The afternoon passed pleasantly with a few laughs and some shared small talk, then Mark went home. They continued to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice, then both graduated from junior high school They ended up in the same high school where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally the long awaited senior year came, and three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark il they could talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. UDO you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?” asked Bill. “You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn’t want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mother’s sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide. But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that il I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might fol­low. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, you did a lot more. You saved my life.”

John W Sclatier

Rev. E. Anderson

DREAMING DREAMS

Robert Lopatin thought it was too late. As a boy, he’d dreamed of becoming a doctor, but instead he graduated from college and went into his father’s hardware business.

Twenty seven years later, when his father sold out, Robert had the option of retiring.

But one day at a friend’s wedding, he talked to a young medical school graduate. Suddenly he remembered his boyhood dream. It was still deep within him. Sop at 51, he decided to back to school and become a doctor.

It took enormous commitment, but he did it. At 56 he graduated from Einstein College of Medicine, now he serves at a medical centre in the Bronx. He loves it, even the 100 hour weeks and the graveyard shifts. He says, ‘I feel as if I had died and was born again.’

Is there a dream in your heart? Has life buried it? Have others told you it’s too late?

Don’t believe it!\Robert Lopatin became a doctor in his mid 50s. Grandma Moses took up painting at 75 and had a celebrated 26 years career as an artist. Noah started building the ark at 500.

Pursue your dream no matter how far-fetched it may seem, for your dreams are like your children – they’re your offspring; they’re the joy of your present and the hope of your future. Protect them! Feed them! Encourage them to grow, for as long as you have a dream, you’ll never be old!

Word for Today

Rev. E. Anderson

THE ONLY SERMON SOMEONE WILL EVER HEAR

Bill has wild hair, a T-shirt, torn jeans and no shoes; it’s his complete wardrobe for four years of college. Across the street from his campus is a very conservative church and Bill decides to visit it.

In he walks, without shoes, wearing his usual get-up complete with wild hair. The church is packed and he can’t find a seat, so he walks down the aisle and sits on the carpet in front of the pulpit – something you jus don’t do in this church.

Within seconds everybody is uptight and the ministers stops preaching. Suddenly an 80 year old deacon with a courtly manner, a cane and silver-grey hair, begins to walk slowly toward the newcomer. It takes a long time to reach himand most of the congregation are sure they know what he’s going to do when he gets there – and they don’t blame him.

But what happens next stuns all of them and changes their church forever. To their amazement, when the old man reaches Bill, he drops his cane to the floor and with great difficulty lowers himself beside him – so that Bill won’t be lone!

When the pastor regains control, he tells the hushed congregation, ‘what I am about to preach you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget!’

Be careful how you live today – you may be the only sermon someone will ever hear!

Taken from Word for Today

Remember: Christ condescended to come to where we were and even took on our humanity to get close us first of all. He became one with us to know us and be our great Divine Friend and the die in our room and stead on the Cross in order to save and give new life to us.

Rev. E. Anderson

ARE YOU GOING TO HELP ME?

In 1989 an 8.2 earthquake almost flattened Armenia, killing over 30,000 people in less than four minutes.

In the midst of utter devastation and chaos, a father left his wile securely at home and rushed to the school where his son was supposed to be, only to discover that the building was as flat as a pancake.

After the traumatic initial shock, he remembered the promise he had made to his son: “No matter what, I’ll always be there for you!” And tears began to fill his eyes. As he looked at the pile of debris that once was the school, it looked hopeless, but he kept remembering his commit­ment to his son.

He began to concentrate on where he walked his son to class at school each morning. Remembering his son’s class­room would be in the back right comer of the building; he rushed there and started digging through the rubble.

As he was digging, other forlorn parents arrived, clutching their hearts, saying: “My son!” ‘My daughter!” Other well meaning parents tried to pull him off of what was left of the school saying:

“It’s too late!”

^“They’re dead!”

“You can’t help!”

“’Go home!”

“Come on, face reality, there’s nothing you can do!” “You’re just going to make things worse!”

To each parent he responded with one line: ‘Are you going to help me now?” And then he proceeded to dig for his son, stone by stone.

The fire chief showed up and tried to pull him off of the school’s debris saying “Fires are breaking out, explosions are happening everywhere. You’re in danger. We’ll take care of it. Go home.” To which this loving, caring Armenian father asked, ‘Are you going to help me now?”

The police came and said, “You’re angry, distraught and it’s over. You’re endangering others. Go home. We’ll handle it!” To which he replied, “Are you going to help me now?” No one helped.

Courageously he proceeded alone because he needed to know for himself: Is my boy alive or is he dead?”

He dug for eight ……. 12 hours… 24 hours… 36 hours… then, in the 38th hour, he pulled back a boulder and heard his son’s voice. He screamed his son’s name, “ARMAND!” He heard back, ‘Dad!? It’s me, Dad! I told the other kids not to worry. I told ‘em that if you were alive you’d save me and when you saved me, they’d be saved. You promised, ‘No matter what, I’ll always be there for you!’ You did it, Dad!”

‘What’s going on in there? How is it?” the father asked ‘There are 14 of us left out of 33, Dad. We’re scared, hun­gry, thirsty and thankful you’re here. When the building collapsed, it made a wedge, like a triangle, and it saved us.’

“Come on out, boy!”

“No, Dad! let the other kids out first, ’cause I know you’ll get me! No matter what, I know you’ll be there for me!”

Mark V Hansen

Rev. E. Anderson

PETER PAN

Some would say “Peter Pan” is a fairy tale. But I’m not so sure.

In Great Ormond Street, London, stands the first children’s hospital ever to be opened in Britain, Every year 9000 young patients pass through its wards. Not only that, vital research into children’s illnesses is carried on there.

You’ll be wondering what this has to do with “Peter Pan,” that delightful play for children by Sir James Barrie. Well, Great Ormond Street Hospital was not always the place it is today. In the 1920’s, dedicated men determined to do all they could to open its doors to more and more children. They went to Barrie and asked him if he would help.

He was not a committee man, but said that if ever an opportunity arose to help, he would seize it. Six months later he gifted “Peter Pan” to the hospital. It meant he would never receive a penny for it. Instead, the hospital would reap the rewards of his genius.

Though this was 40 years ago, “Peter Pan” is still performed all over the world-and every penny goes to help the children at Great Ormond Street.

That is why, in the hospital, you will find the Peter Pan Ward-and why Barrie’s great tale of the boy who never grew up is helping other children to grow up.

Rev. E. Anderson

John Corcoran-

The Man Who Couldn’t Read

For as long as John Corcoran could remember, words had mocked him. The letters in sentences traded places, vowel sounds lost themselves in the tunnels of his ears. In school he’d sit at his desk, stupid and silent as a stone, knowing he would be different from everyone else for­ever. if only someone had sat next to that little boy, put an arm around his shoulder and said, I’ll help you. Don’t be scared.”

But no one had heard of dyslexia then. And John couldn’t tell them that the left side of his brain, the lobe humans use to arrange symbols logically in a sequence, had always misfired.

Instead, in second grade they put him in the “dumb” row. In third grade a nun handed a yardstick to the other children when John refused to read or write and let each student have a crack at his legs. In fourth grade his teacher called on him to read and let one minute of quiet pile upon another until the child thought he would suffo­cate. Then he was passed on to the next grade and the next John Corcoran never failed a year in his life.

In his senior year, John was voted homecoming king, went steady with the valedictorian and starred on the basketball team. His mom kissed him when he gradu­ated-and kept talking about college. College? It would be insane to consider. But he finally decided on the University of Texas at El Paso where he could try out for the basketball team. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. . .  and recrossed enemy lines.

On campus John asked each new friend: Which teach­ers gave essay tests? Which gave multiple choice? The minute he stepped out of a class, he tore the pages of scribble from his notebook, in case anyone asked to see his notes. He stared at thick textbooks in the evening so his roommate wouldn’t doubt. And he lay in bed, exhausted but unable: to sleep, unable to make his whirring mind let go John promised he’d go to Mass 30 days straight at the crack of dawn, if only God would let him get his degree.

He got the diploma. He gave God his 30 days of Mass. Now what? Maybe he was addicted to the edge. Maybe the thing he felt most insecure about-his mind-was what he needed most to have admired. Maybe that’s why, in 1961, John became a teacher.

John taught in California. Each day he had a student read the textbook to the class. He gave standardized tests that he could grade by placing a form with holes over each correct answer and he lay in bed for hours on week­end mornings, depressed.

Then he met Kathy, an A student and a nurse. Not a leaf, like John. A rock. “There’s something I have to tell you, Kathy,” he said one night in 1965 before their mar­riage, “I . . . .can’t read.”

‘He’s a teacher,” she thought. He must mean he can’t read well. Kathy didn’t understand until years later when she saw John unable to read a children’s book to their 18-month~ld daughter. Kathy filled out his forms, read and wrote his letters. Why didn’t he simply ask her to teach him to read and write? He couldn’t believe that anyone could teach him.

At age 28 John borrowed $2,500, bought a second house, fixed it up and rented it. He bought and rented another. And another. His business got bigger and bigger until he needed a secretary, a lawyer and a partner.

Then one day his accountant told him he was a mil­lionaire. Perfect. Who’d notice that a millionaire always pulled on the doors that said PUSH or paused before entering public bathrooms, waiting to see which one the men walked out of?    

-

In 1982 the bottom began to fall out. His properties started to sit empty and investors pulled out. Threats of foreclosures and lawsuits tumbled out of envelopes. Every waking moment, it seemed, he was pleading with bankers to extend his loans, coaxing builders to stay on the job, trying to make sense of the pyramid of paper. Soon he knew they’d have him on the witness stand and the man in black robes would say: “The truth, John Corcoran. Can’t you even read?”

Finally in the fall of 1986, at age 48, John did two things he swore he never would. He put up his house as collat­eral to obtain one last construction loan. And he walked into the Carlsbad City Library and told the woman m charge of the tutoring program, I can’t read.”

Then he cried.

He was placed with a 65-year-old grandmother named Eleanor Condit. Painstakingly-letter by letter, phoneti­cally-she began teaching him. Within 14 months, his land-development company began to revive. And John Corcoran was learning to read.

The next step was confession: a speech before 200 stunned businessmen in San Diego. To heal, he had to come clean. He was placed on the board of directors of the San Diego Council on Literacy and began traveling across the country to give speeches.

Illiteracy is a form of slavery!’ he would cry. ‘We can’t waste time blaming anyone. We need to become obsessed with teaching people to read!’

He read every book or magazine he could get his hands on, every road sign he passed, out loud, as long as Kathy could bear it. It was glorious, like singing. And now he could sleep.

Then one day it occurred to him-one more thing he could finally do. Yes, that dusty box in his office, that sheaf of papers bound by ribbon. .. a quarter-century later, John Corcoran could read his wife’s love letters.

Gary Smith