"Everyone Needs Guidance” Sermon Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler – May 11,
2014 Centenary United Psalm
25:1-10; John 10:1-10
Mother’s Day Today, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, I would like for us to consider that no mother has ever had any guarantees that they will make a difference in the lives of her children. Even though everyone needs guidance, many people seek it only when they want it. If they have a new smart phone filled with applications or a new I-Pod, they are most eager to learn all the benefits. When it comes to life itself, a good number of people think to themselves, “I got this.” However, the runways of life are filled with the wreckage of people who never sought any guidance. This morning let us engage our imaginations.
I want you to pretend that you are a single parent that is
absolutely brilliant, creative and intensely loving. You have at
your command an infinite number of resources both financial and
practical. You have been
blessed with a universe of friends in the most influential positions of
society. Your talents and abilities are without parallel. The major challenge you face is that you must guide the growth of
your children without them being able to see you. They will never
be able to hear your spoken words, nor will they ever be able to feel
your arms around them. As a matter of fact, your children will
never have any objective evidence that you exist aside from a vast array
of insights and commentary that others have provided about you from
their pre-conceived notions. Even under such severe handicapping conditions, your greatest
desire is to guide your children so that they grow up to become
well-balanced, loving and responsible men and women. To accomplish
this, you use everything at your command to guide them to understand
that they have many of the same qualities that you possess.
How would you proceed? What
methods would you use as you attempt to communicate to them? By now some of you may have recognized that I am talking about
the circumstances that God faces with each of us. Even for God, as
with our parents, there are no guarantees that during our lifetimes we
will make any substantial connection with our single parent. This use of our
imaginations is not as far fetched as we might imagine.
In 1880, Arthur and Kate Keller enjoyed the new arrival of
their infant daughter. For
eighteen months Helen was a delightful, normal child.
However, shortly thereafter, a
rare illness robbed her of the ability to see and hear. The
devastated parents found themselves in a similar place as God.
Both Arthur and Kate had become invisible and silent to Helen. They hired the services of Annie Sullivan who through patience
and perseverance, established meaningful contact with Helen in a short
period of time. The relationship between the two grew as the young
girl became increasing curious about a world that she could no longer
hear or see. Annie offered
guidance by teaching finger spelling to Helen that eventually blossomed
into a mastery of sign language that was created by Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet. Through Annie’s guidance, Helen developed some very unique
skills. She became a mystic. She learned to accept what happened
to her as a unique gift. Helen learned to speak in several
languages. She could identify accurately various varieties of
trees by touching their bark. She earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Perhaps the most intriguing skill Helen developed was her ability
to sense the vibration of a person’s presence.
For example, if a person entered the room, Helen could call that
person by name even if she had not been in their presence for years.
Helen became an inspiration by
teaching others that it is possible to sense God’s presence even
though such a loving presence came from a source that was invisible to
their senses. Helen Keller’s mission statement was, “To help the blind to see
and the deaf to hear” as she had learned to do.
Helen also became keenly aware
that countless people have normal eyes and cannot see and have perfectly
functioning ears and cannot hear. Even when guidance is
constantly streaming in their direction, they continue to miss all the
cues. For example, parents were attempting to rear two daughters that
were half-sisters. When the
girls were teenagers they wanted no part of the boundaries and guidance
that their parents attempted to provide. One developed a dependency on
drugs and alcohol and the other had a baby at the age of 14. The
infant died shortly after it was delivered. As the one sister
continued to deteriorate with her addictions, the other one had grown to
accept the loss of her baby and became a news-reporter. During her broadcasts, her ratings plummeted and she grew
increasingly despondent. She was fearful that her contract would
not be renewed. She visited a pastor whom she had known for years
and told him, “I’m done. It’s all over for me. I’m a failure
at everything I try. I
couldn’t even deliver a baby that lived.”
Sensing her despair, Pastor Wintley Phipps put his arms around her and gave her some timely guidance. He said, Do you know what? I don’t believe God is
finished with you. You might lose your job, but I believe God is
preparing you for something else even though your current experiences
are telling you otherwise. It will be something wonderful, well
beyond your imagination’s ability to anticipate.
Give yourself a chance. Give God a chance. Be open to what you
cannot see. Pastor Phipps used the same guidance that Annie
Sullivan used that allowed Helen Keller to help her to break free from
her darkness and silence. “I don’t believe God is finished with you
yet.” As she had predicted, the pink slip arrived and the young
reporter lost her job. She
spent many long hours crying as her fears moved from being
phantoms in her mind to
becoming real.
Even though her reversals in
life came one after the other, nothing was powerful enough to wipe away
the seed of guidance
sown by Pastor Phipps’ words. Because of a very
strange set of circumstances, another opportunity became available.
As she walked through the opened door, she remembered the words
of simple, practical guidance from her pastor. Her imagination
soared with hope she never had.
That woman’s name is Oprah Winfrey who has become one of the
great business personalities in the entertainment field and a woman who
has never forgotten her roots. We never know how much
our single parent
wants to break through and set us free from the clutter that our minds
and emotions frequently generate.
In our lesson today,
Jesus was teaching that the world offers
guidance but it frequently
comes in the form of thieves
and robbers that try to steal
our happiness, to kill our spirits and to diminish the quality of our
lives. Jesus then added, “I have
come that you might have life – life in all its abundance and fullness.”
(John 10:10)
When a mother understands this reality, she can become a creative and
assertive force in her guidance. A man was killed by a hit and run driver a number of years ago. He left behind a widow and five children. Since her husband had been the bread winner, she had to become very frugal and resourceful with the proceeds from his two life insurance policies. Her purpose was to launch their five children into the world so that each would become a contributor to society. She never once felt sorry for herself or lamented even for a
moment that her skin was not the same color as the successful people
with whom she was surrounded.
She took in the laundry of her neighbors including the ironing of
shirts, blouses, skirts and dresses.
She became a skilled seamstress and learned how to work on the
family car. Routinely, she took her three boys and two girls to experience
art galleries, museums, concerts, opera and baseball games.
She gave each child their own individual
moments with mom as she used
to call them. The
television was on one hour after supper if all of them had completed
their homework. They
watched the news and international commentary which they discussed.
Television was never used as an escape or for entertainment. What she accomplished was impossible by most human standards.
However, with God as her co-pilot, one of her children became a
surgeon, one established an architectural firm, another became a
machinist and another became the regional manager for a network of Home
Depots. The last one became
the director of a pre-school for an industrial complex with 460 children
and 52 staff. She ended the
Mother’s Day article that she wrote with these words: I suspect that I ignored every barrier that tried
its best to discourage me from being the impressionable mother that I
wanted to be. I was determined to awaken within each of my children the
awe, mystery and beauty that our wonderful world can inspire in us.
Each of them developed the desire to learn everything they could
from study, reading and using their imaginations. They also learned that
attitude toward life makes a big difference to the quality of their
personal journey. I am very
proud of them. What did Helen Keller, Oprah Winfrey and Bertha Weaver’s five
children have in common?
What all of us have is the potential to have everything we could
possibly want in life because it was
pre-wired inside of us when
we were born. All we
have to do is accept the guidance on how to access it.
God is never finished with any of us until we draw our last
breath. It is amazing the number of people that are standing on a whale while fishing for minnows. God has equipped us with the potential ingredients to become a powerhouse of creativity. As the Good Shepherd and a marvelous Guidance Counselor, Jesus entered our world and pointed the way for us to be creative, imaginative, productive and compassionate. The rest is up to us. |