False Hope.

 

In the early 1980s I was approached after church by an elderly church member affectionately named Granny. She asked if I knew her grand-daughter who was now overseas but had been working as a nurse in the same hospital as me. Yes, I did know her, quite well, in fact, as we had worked together quite a number of times over an extended period of time. Granny explained that her grand-daughter was working overseas at a mission hospital but had caused quite a deal of disruption by insisting that things be done her way.

 

Granny knew that although I had left nursing, I was, at that time, running a counselling practice at the same hospital. And so she asked if I could write to her grand-daughter as a concerned friend and encourage her to change her approach. I agreed and said that I would send an immediate telegram with an appropriate Bible reference and follow it with a lengthy letter of explanation.

 

So I duly sent the telegram which read: AMOS 3:1-3 LETTER FOLLOWING. And I did follow it with a letter of explanation.

Amos 3:1-3 –says: Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, (2) You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. (3) Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

 

Unfortunately the telegraph operator left off the first three letters of the name of the Bible book Amos. So the telegram that she received read, S 3:1-3 LETTER FOLLOWING.

Now the grand-daughter was an intelligent girl and figured out that it was a Bible reference in the message and to expect a letter from me in the mail. But what book of the Bible starts with S? It couldn’t be Psalms as that starts with a letter P. It couldn’t be Samuel as that starts with a 1 or 2.  It could only be the Solomon’s Song of Songs.

 

Embarrassingly, Song of Songs 3:1-3 reads: By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. (2) I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. (3) The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?

 

And this was a message from Lionel and it said that a letter was following.

 

Well, the grand-daughter was sufficiently moved by this, and so she wrote me a very passionate love letter responding to her perception of what I had said. Our letters crossed in the mail and it was over a week later that I received another letter in which she profusely apologised for the misunderstanding.

 

Now you want me to tell you that we got married and lived happily ever after – well, no, we simply continued to love each other as a sister and brother in Christ. And so apologies were accepted and to her credit she took my counsel and ceased her inappropriate behaviour.

So there is such a thing as dashed hope.

 

--- Lionel Hartley

 Devil-foiled Youth Ministry.

Proverbs 16:9 (TLV) "Best Laid Plans Often Go Awry".

When I was a teenager in the Anglican Church the priest approached me and another young person to join with him as he set up the church hall as a youth drop-in centre with youth activities on a Sunday afternoon. He booked the hall and purchased a large amount of equipment - table tennis tables, card tables, dartboards, board games and all the paraphernalia that went with them and gave me a set of keys to the hall. He then worked on an extensive advertising campaign within the church, the local schools and in the general community. For a couple of months, every Sunday afternoon I would unlock the hall and turn on the hot water urn for refreshments. Shortly thereafter the priest would join us in the hall, say a prayer with us and go out into the streets surrounding the church to round up young people to attend. Faithfully the other young fellow and I would boringly fill the time playing table tennis or darts, activities that neither of us bookworms particularly enjoyed. No one else ever came and eventually the idea was abandoned and the equipment donated to the church school.

-- Lionel Hartley

Do you have a best friend?

A certain person recently confessed to me that there was a time when she absolutely hated me. A recent hug initiated by her told me that this is no longer the case. When my wife Rosemary and I were courting, this lady, Lorraine, had been Rosemary's best friend for the previous decade or so, and in Lorraine's mind, I was stealing her best friend. We solved that by introducing her to a friend of mine and they got married a week after us. Just before Christmas we spent several days with them as their guests at a seaside resort. After over 50 years Lorraine still refers to Rosemary as her best friend.

Do you have a best friend? Someone who is clearly closer to you than anyone else? The book of Hebrews makes the argument that Jesus is that part of the Godhead who has the closest relationship with humans. He created our universe. He became one of us. He redeemed us. One of His current rôles is pleading on our behalf against the condemnation of our sins. He truly identifies with us. 

Welcome Him as your best friend today.

-- Lionel Hartley

 Ideas and the benefits of journaling.

Ideas, like sunsets, are brilliant flashes of colour which, unless photographed are lost forever excepting as some grey shadowy recall in the recesses of our memory. By journaling our ideas and thoughts, the cognitive content is preserved, not to freeze it in time, but to use it to secure the base of a springboard for the fostering of still more ideas.

-- Lionel Hartley, Great Ideas Journal, Salubrity™ Seminars, 1998, reprinted 2004, (Introduction)

 Laughter to save the situation.

"A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones." Proverbs 17:22.

 

After having just become engaged to be married, my fiancée and I were out for a walk along a riverbank. As we walked hand-in-hand, I had a sudden sinking feeling, as the riverbank gave way underneath me and I slowly slid down the muddy embankment.

 

Just as I was thinking, 'Thank goodness I haven't got wet', I blurted a bible verse out of my mouth. I didn't remember the reference but I clearly remembered having memorised the words. Psalms 69:1 and 2, "… the waters have come up to my neck, I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters."

 

I looked up at my fiancée who, fortunately, had let go of my hand, and could see that she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. As it was imperative that one of us save the situation, although my 3-piece suit was ruined and I had a muddy climb ahead of me to get out of the water, I began to laugh. This eased the tension considerably and we now look back at that episode with a smile.

 

King David wrote this Psalm during a very difficult time in his life, far more difficult than me sinking into the mud.

 

--- Lionel Hartley

 

Given New Life.

 

When we owned the old general store in Red Range, NSW, as part of the heritage restoration I rebuilt the old blacksmith's shop alongside the building. Elderly neighbours had told me that the original forge was made from an old disk ploughshare and so I set about reconstructing it.

 

Fortuitously, the long-since abandoned rubbish tip on the village common provided lots of scrap iron, including a large circular disk ploughshare and a length of railway iron from which to make an anvil. I used the newly-made forge to reconstruct some hand-made tools to go with it.

I would put a rusty, cold, dull piece of iron into the fire, and, after awhile, take out that identical piece of iron out of the fire, but now it was bright and glowing and I could give it a new life and fashion it into something useful.

 

Philippians 3:20-21 says, "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."

 

When we die our bodies are consigned to the grave like junk on a rubbish tip, dead, lifeless and valueless. But the resurrection assures us that, in the fullness of time, the master Blacksmith will convert this lifeless trash into something bright and glowing and give it a new life.

 

(1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 KJV)  But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. 14) For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. 15) For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 16) For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: 17) Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. 18) Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

 

n      Lionel Hartley

 The Value of a Smile.

About 6 decades ago, as a young man, I was walking along an omnibus island in Cathedral Square in Christchurch, New Zealand. I don't know that they have them there any more, but an omnibus island was a small narrow strip of pavement that 'busses could stop, clear of other traffic, for collecting or alighting passengers. 

This day I walked past an elderly lady who moved so gloomily, I immediately felt compassion on her. As she caught my eye I gave her the broadest smile that I could muster. 

I had hardly walked more than a few paces away from her when she turned and caught up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. She thanked me for the smile, saying that it was the very gift that she needed to brighten her day. 

She went on to explain that she had been contemplating ending her life and had decided that no-one cared even enough to smile at her. She asked me for a hug and as I gave her one she assured me that she had changed her mind about stepping under the next 'bus that came along.

-- Lionel Hartley