April 27, 2020 (Monday)
Stephen Spielberg produced 30-minute science fiction stories in a 1985 TV series called “Amazing Stories.” One of the stories was about a 15-year-old volunteer boy at the battle of the Alamo*. He was given a message to take to an Army General on Shuttlecock Road. When he went through the gate, he found himself in 1985 San Antonio. The rest of the show was all about his single-minded purpose to deliver the message from Colonel Travis. There were many obstacles in his way but he did not seem distracted by the modern city all around him. His sole thought was to obey orders and deliver the message. It was pure entertainment fiction, but it reminded me that Jesus gave us a message to deliver to this world and we must not allow anything to keep us from performing our work.
The late Dr. Carlyle Marney, pastor of First Baptist Church of Austin, was a frequent speaker at Baylor many years ago when I was a student. One story he told has stayed with me. He spoke of a trained dog who went to the butcher shop every Saturday morning to receive a package to take to his master. When he left the butcher shop, he was surrounded by neighborhood dogs who followed him all the way home. He held his head up, trotted straight and tall, never veering from his appointed route, to deliver the package. It was his mission. And he allowed nothing to keep him from doing what his master had taught him to do.
Just before Jesus ascended back to Heaven, he gave us a commission: “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20 NLT).
This is our mission. Let us be faithful to perform it.
It’s just a story, not in the Bible, but it teaches a lesson: Jesus was asked, “What plans have you made to have the gospel proclaimed after you have ascended back to Heaven?” Jesus replied, “I have given the message to Mary, Martha, James, Peter, John and the others and have sent them on a mission to this world to tell the story.” “But what if they fail? What other plans have you made?” Jesus looked straight into the questioner’s eyes and said, “I have made no other plans. I am counting on them.”
“I love to tell the story, ‘Twill be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love..and when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song, ’twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long.”
AN ADDITIONAL WORD:
In the weeks just past I have been writing blogs ahead of time. As of this date, I have written them through June 7, 2020. I am amending today’s blog to give you this additional word. As I have followed the news about the Covid-19 pandemic, I have learned that many people on breathing machines have died. As I studied the reasons, I found that the virus effect sets up a condition that prevents the natural process of breathing that allows oxygen into the blood that sustains life. The effect is almost like a thick paint on the entire breathing system that prevents the oxygen from passing into the blood. Breathing machines cannot force oxygen through; the patients therefore die.
When I think of people struggling to breathe, it brings back memories of my first asthma attack at age eleven. I had never heard of something called “asthma” and knew only that I felt like I was suffocating. My grandmother sent word to my mother that I was dying. But I did not die. It was my first asthmatic episode. There would be more, and they would get worse for many years to follow. The sequence of events was always the same: for three days I would sneeze almost constantly. When the sneezing abated, the asthma set in and for another three days I would struggle to get a breath. I just toughed it out; back then we did not have money for doctors. Eventually I received an adrenaline shot, which speeded up the heart and forced rapid breathing, but that did not happen much. Allergy shots for a year did not seem to help. Mostly I just waited it out. When I went away to college, it was getting worse, and a girl heard what was happening to me and came to me with what was called a nebulizer. I took a whiff of the spray and was immediately helped. I went to a drug store and bought one for myself and for the next fifteen or twenty years relied on the nebulizer for help. I had missed too many classes to get credit, so I moved to Waco to attend Baylor, which was on the quarter system and allowed me to start over. I never had an asthma attack in Waco, and some time after moving to Rockport stopped having asthma attacks. I have been free of asthma ever since (almost 60 years). But the memories of those attacks are still real and I empathize strongly with people who have breathing problems.
Let us pray for this pandemic to end. It continues to cause suffering and death. We need to pray for one another; patients, physicians, nurses, others and families are suffering and we are all susceptible.