My Inbox of Daily Inspirations: Daily Heartlight -- June 13, 2008

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June 13, 2008

|-- FATHER'S DAY @ HEARTLIGHT -----------------------------|

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=========================== TODAY'S ARTICLE ==========================

What Difference Would It Make?, by Rubel Shelly

Jack lets us send "The FAX of Life" to him each week. Just over a year
ago now, he shared a wonderful story with me and vouched for its
details.

The story begins with a nine-year-old boy who was being raised by a
single mother. He never met his father, but his hard-working mother put
in 72 hours lots of weeks just to make ends meet. He had a sister two
years older than himself, and they worked a garden to raise vegetables
to eat and to sell.

There was some help from the state welfare agencies. A free-lunch
program at school helped feed him and his sister. And the little family
felt blessed when they were able to move into a nicer house in a better
neighborhood.

Across the street from the new house lived a kind Christian lady. She
was not particularly noteworthy. She didn't teach Sunday School. Her
own husband wasn't a Christian, and their children followed their dad's
lead and were pretty indifferent to faith. On a given Saturday,
however, she saw the little boy and his sister playing in the yard. She
asked if they would like to go with her to Sunday School the next day.
As much from curiosity as anything else, they decided to go. And their
exhausted mother gave permission. It would give her a bit of a break.

With whatever flaws there may have been in that little church, it
opened up a whole new world to those two children. For the first time
ever, they heard names such as Noah and Moses. They read Scripture and
learned the story of Jesus of Nazareth. They saw people who cared about
each other and whose lives were somehow different. It made an
impression. They accepted Christ in that little community of faith.
They were baptized there. They grew up there.

She noticed and cared.

College, time in the U.S. Army, marriage, children -- all these came in
time to that little boy. Success in business has allowed him to bless
many good works with generous gifts. He has been a faithful teacher and
occasional preacher of the Good News. He has even had opportunities to
teach in several foreign countries. He and his wife have taken in a
number of foster children. Some of the more recent ones have been unwed
mothers. Shades of his own childhood!

But Jack told me the story with less concern about the little boy who
became a godly man than to speak of that woman across the street from a
family without a father. She noticed and cared. Without benefit of
psychology or training in Christian ministry, she did something that
most of us might have thought was inconsequential. She cared enough to
invite them to Sunday School. There they found their real father -- the
Father of their Spirits, who gave them a new life.

Jack knows the details of the story well, for he was that little boy.
And he loves to tell the story of Kathleen Callen's invitation to
Sunday School that day. He hopes that it might encourage someone else
to do something, say something, or give something that could make a
difference in another person's life.

Things that look small are often the things that make all the
difference.

---------
(c) 2008 Used by permission. From Rubel Shelly <rshelly@rc.edu>'s
"FAX of Life" printed each Tuesday. See Faith Matters for
previous issues of the "FAX of Life."

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Daily Heartlight -- June 13, 2008