by Kathy Brasby | Jun 24, 2013 | Hope
This puppet show was not supposed to happen.
After traveling over 1200 miles to work for a small church in Mexico, including preparing a 30-minute puppet performance for their children, I was bedridden with the flu and a 102-degree temperature all week.
Fortunately I was part of a team that worked without me but I was in charge of the puppet show.
By Sunday morning, when the performance was planned, I felt well enough to help prepare the props and set up our stage.
And then two of our teenage puppeteers approached us, faces like a birthday child with no gifts. “We just found out that Mary bought drug paraphernalia this week and tried to hide it in Teresa’s suit case.”
What do you say to that?
Mary had joined our team at the last minute and no one knew her very well. We just hadn’t realized how un-well we knew her. I envisioned a church team getting busted at the border for paraphernalia possession – and sweet Teresa getting the blame.
Nothing like a little distraction when you’re trying to put a performance together.
We drew in a team breath – no easy task when half the team was still hyperventilating over Mary’s deception – and continued on. The props were ready, puppets laid about, puppeteers ready – and the electricity went out. We needed electricity for our music.
Power outages, we learned, were not uncommon in this neighborhood. Why hadn’t we packed batteries for the CD player? For the same reason we had let Mary join the team. Not thinking well.
We dispatched someone to buy batteries. He returned with four D batteries purchased for $20, which was highway robbery, and we punched them into our player. We then found out what highway robbery really is: buying batteries that were dead for $20.
So my innovative husband threw himself into building an adapter that would run the CD player off a car battery. Visualize that. The car battery was bigger than the CD player.
He stripped wires and taped ends together. Five minutes before the performance time, he gave me a thumbs up.
And then the electricity came on.
We completed the show and then the lights went out again.
But the audience applauded our show and several came forward with questions and commitments for the pastor.
In spite of the flu, Mary the paraphernalia smuggler, and power issues, the puppet show that couldn’t happen did happen. And with a resounding “yes!”
Perseverance matters.
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 21, 2013 | Hope
Although Esther in the Old Testament has a book named after her, the Bible portrays her as a hero who didn’t start out that way.
The book of Esther relates how the Jewish people, under a genocide order by a duped Persian king, were saved by insomnia and a reluctant queen.
Often we see Esther as a brave hero – and she was in the end. But her transformation is part of the story. She didn’t start out a hero.
Instead, she became queen through a king of beauty contest, at her uncle’s wish.
Her uncle, Mordecai, is the hero of this story and Esther is the person transformed. Mordecai was courageous and concerned about others. Not only did he want to protect the Jews, but he saved the king’s life at one point.
Esther, once brought into the king’s palace, remained rather anonymous. The court people did not realize she was a Jew, which indicates that she probably did not hold to a kosher lifestyle. When the news of the order against the Jews came to her ears, she didn’t do anything.
Mordecai prompted her to approach the king and she, at first, hesitated. When she learned of Mordecai in sackcloth, she told him to stop mourning.
But then she learned of her people’s problem and she, in an amazing character transformation, grasped her destiny.
When Esther decided to act, she revealed the courage and character that she needed to complete her destiny. But she didn’t step forward in giddy confidence. “If I perish, I perish,” she told Mordecai.
God is never mentioned in the book of Esther. Even when Esther asks for “fasting,” we wonder why she didn’t ask for “prayer and fasting.”
But the providential events – from a shy but beautiful Jewish girl being selected as queen of Persia to a king who couldn’t sleep and instead was reminded of Mordecai’s kindness to him – signal something amazing going on behind the scenes.
In our storytelling economy, we would have placed the brave and wise Mordecai in a position to save the people. We would not have chosen a quiet queen content to hide.
(Esther’s name in Hebrew could be Mistar, related to mystery and similar to I am hidden.)
Yet this non-hero stepped up when called upon, providing victory and salvation to the Jews.
The Bible relates the stories of non-heroes with stunning results.
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 19, 2013 | Stories
I knew things were going to get a little sticky when I uncovered an ink refill for a printer that I don’t remember owning. I had to crack open my archive box and I was finding interesting treasures.
pochette CD.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Archive box” sounds fancy, doesn’t it?
My archive box is a plastic box with lid that contains CDs from programs I’ve installed. What a great idea, I thought when I got it. All my CDs were safely stored in one place and protected from dust and stuff.
I don’t know why the ink refill was in the box. The printer must not have lasted long enough to even earn a refill.
I don’t visit my archive box much but my computer crashed and I was re-installing programs.
But opening that box was like a trip down memory lane but without the warm fuzzy emotions. What I felt was confusion.
For example, I uncovered a CD with a big black question mark scrawled on the label.
What in the world? Who labels their CD with a question mark?
Me, obviously.
Although nobody accuses me of being well-organized (well, someone did once but that was before they saw my desk), I took some pride on my box as a shred of planning.
Every program CD went into that box after installation.
I am proud to say that there were no 5 1/4 inch floppies in there. Using my system, that’s a miracle.
So I started flipping through CD jewel boxes for programs to reinstall.
I found programs that won’t run on anything newer than Windows 98. I found programs for pre-schoolers. (Our youngest is 17.) I found a CD from our classical music days.
I’d like to blame this on the kids but they never open the box. They just run the programs and don’t mess with the details.
Wonder where they learned that?
I’m sure there’s a major life lesson in all this. Something about staying organized but those lessons tend to roll off me like tumbleweeds crossing the prairie.
Sometimes simple is better. So here’s what I learned: I’m cleaning out the box.
That way there’ll be room for further archiving.
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 14, 2013 | Hope
The book of Jonah contains some amazing structure, showing the author did more than just write down what happened. He structured a story that carried an unexpected meaning.
Let me explain something of the structure. The book has four chapters. Chapters 1 and 3 parallel each other in interesting ways. The same for chapters 2 and 4.
Many readers, however, tend to skip chapter 4 assuming the meaning of the story was landed by the end of chapter 3.
Let’s take a closer look.
The story in ways is a simple one. Jonah is a prophet of God who is told by God to go to Nineveh. Nineveh is the hated enemy of Jonah’s people and so he refuses, choosing instead to try to run away from God by booking passage on a ship in the other direction.
When a storm rages, the sailors of the ship look for a cause. Jonah admits that his disobedience has probably caused the storm and insists that they throw him overboard. They eventually do and Jonah is rescued when he’s swallowed by a giant fish.
During the three days he’s in the fish, Jonah has time to acknowledge God’s mercy in rescuing him. After he is thrown onto the shore, Jonah goes to Nineveh, preaches the message God gave him, and watches the Ninevites repent.
If we stop there, at the end of chapter 3, the book seems to be a story about how obedience produces good results.
But chapter 4 includes yet another twist, because Jonah sits on a hill outside Nineveh and sulks, hoping God will still destroy the city.
Chapters 1 and 3 both deal with pagans encountering God. In chapter 1, the sailors worship many gods but eventually, after throwing Jonah overboard (very unwillingly, for they fear this God who can whip up such a storm), worship God on the shore because the storm halted. These pagans recognize God’s hand in preserving their lives.
In chapter 3, the Ninevites hear Jonah’s warning and recognize God’s hand. They change their ways, repenting and asking God to relent.
The pagans recognize God’s sovereignty.
In chapters 2 and 4, the story centers more on Jonah’s dialogue with God. In chapter 2, he is grateful for God’s rescue and compares himself to those who cling to worthless idols. According to Jonah, they turn away from God’s love for them while he recognizes that salvation comes from the Lord. These prove to be empty words and Jonah’s attitude is revealed in the final chapter.
In chapter 4, he complains. “I knew you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” Then he declares that it would be better to die than see God extend mercy to Jonah’s enemies.
Although, in chapter 2, God does not answer Jonah, he does so in chapter 4. God first sends a vine to shade Jonah and then sends a worm to kill the vine. God says, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
Jonah declares he’s so angry he wishes he were dead. He cares more for a vine than for the people of a city.
And the story ends with God’s statement. “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh?”
Through the parallelism of the chapters, the reader is pushed beyond simply seeing Jonah as the repentant prophet. Instead, the structure shows that our author intended us to focus on God’s nature.
Although Jonah wants to limit God’s compassion to a narrow group of people, the reader is shown that God’s grace and mercy extends to all. Those who recognize God receive his kindness.
Structure gives us the tool to uncover that meaning.
by Kathy Brasby | Jun 7, 2013 | Bible
A few years ago, I was involved in a nonprofit fundraising event. In previous years, the director had presented the budget, the needs and the annual giving – the facts.
But this time, we convinced her to contract a short video which captured a slice of the non-profit’s work. Tears flowed and contributions were nearly double over the year before.
Emotion is the way to connect with people.
Jesus, the master storyteller, used stories – parables – connect his meaning with his listeners. Many of his parables have forged their way into popular culture.
Many are familiar with the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Lost Lamb. All parables.
What did Jesus use in his parables that worked so well and have made his stories timeless?
He zeroed in on metaphors. His meaning came through the story itself like meaning comes through a painting or beautiful music.
The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words plays into our understanding.
Jesus’ parables were extended metaphors. They didn’t illustrate an idea; they created a reality.
In our culture today, we use metaphors which might be mysterious to another time and culture. For example, I had a high-speed internet sort of day, with information and contacts zooming by me.
What would that have meant to my 1890 immigrant grandfather? Or to Plato or Socrates?
Another intriguing comparison would be a visual metaphor which our modern technology allows us to use. A familiar example could be an advertisement which juxtapositions a photo of a sports car with that of a panther. We compare qualities such as speed and power.
My point is that metaphors often play within history. To understand Jesus’ parables – his metaphors – we need to study his historical context.
In the Prodigal Son parable, for example, the story gains a new depth of meaning when we understand more of the historical context. In the Middle East, a young man asking for his inheritance while his father was still alive, was really saying, “Dad, why don’t you drop dead?” The father would be expected to get angry, slap his son, and drive the young man from his presence.
None of those things happened in the parable.
Jesus’ listeners would have been intrigued by the alternate tale. We can understand the son’s decision to go home and work as a servant in that context. But why didn’t the father react as expected? He allowed the son to leave and he celebrated the son’s return. Jesus’ meaning included restoration rather than revenge, welcome rather than division.
By use of a story, Jesus presented an alternative to driving away a prodigal. In this parable, the father instead celebrated the return of a beloved son. “We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:31-21 NIV)
The emotions generated in this parable, through storytelling and metaphor, created a connection to Jesus’ audience and emphasized his meaning.