Archive for category: Chaplain’s Corner

“Commitment”

Most gifted speakers make use of a handful of signature stories-anecdotes they can pull out at a moment’s notice to drive home special points.

John F. Kennedy used one of his favorite stories at Brooks Air Force Base in Austin, Texas. He was present to dedicate the new School of Aerospace Medicine. It was the heyday of America’s commitment to the space race, and the four new facilities at Brooks would provide critical support for the emerging astronaut program. “I have come to Texas today to salute an outstanding group of pioneers,” he announced.

Then he referenced the Irish writer Frank O’Connor, who recalled how he and his friends, as boys, would make their way across the countryside. When they came to a wall that was too high to climb or too imposing to permit their journey to continue, they would take their caps off and toss them over the wall.

This was an act of supreme commitment, since they knew their mothers would skin them alive if they lost their caps. They now had no choice but to scale the wall and retrieve them.

JFK declared: “My friends, this nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and we have no choice but to follow it. Whatever the difficulties, they must be overcome. Whatever the hazards, they must be guarded against. With the vital help of all who labor in this space endeavor, we will climb this wall with safety and speed and we shall then explore the wonders of the other side.”

The crowd of 9,000 gave him a standing ovation.

No one suspected that Kennedy’s dedication speech on that warm day Nov. 21, 1963, would be his last official act as President. He was assassinated the following day in Dallas.

 

What is commitment? It is continuing on a worthwhile path, long after the emotion that set us on that path has faded. Or as Jesus puts it in Luke 9:62, in a picture that everyone in the first century could understand: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the service in the kingdom of God.”

The word “courage” comes from the Latin word COR which means “heart.”

You’ve made a commitment to become God’s person. Or to dive into scripture as never before. Or to become a voice to speak the Good News. Or to work for reconciliation of people who are so angry that they haven’t spoken to each other for weeks or months.

Now…do you have the courage to go forward? Is your heart in it? Leave yourself no choice but to go forward.

Only God knows how many tomorrows we still have.

Throw your cap up over the wall.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

 

“You Are Not Alone”

In the late 1960’s, Dr. James Reddick-a Seattle Dentist and experienced mountaineer-took his 12 year old daughter and 11 year old son on a hike up the steep slopes of Mt. Rainier, the volcanic peak that towers above the city.

It was Memorial Day weekend, a time late enough on the calendar for hikers not to be overly worried about winter storms. But the family mountaineering adventure became a nightmare. A sudden blinding snowstorm with hurricane force winds trapped Reddick and his children against the side of the mountain. Their visibility gone and their body temperatures dropping, Reddick began digging furiously with his aluminum mess kit, carving out a kind of cave in the snow.

He put David and Sharon into their sleeping bags and zipped them up, then he tried to figure out a way to seal up the entrance to the shelter.

As Tim Stafford tells the story, Reddick fixed a tarp by the opening. But the wind kept blowing it away.

Finally, Reddick lay down across the opening, using his own body weight to secure the tarp.

Forty-eight hours passed before rescuers saw the edge of a backpack protruding from the snow. Digging deep into the mound before them, they uncovered the two children warm and alive. But James Reddick didn’t make it. In the words of one of the rescuers, he had “taken the cold spot,” using his own body as one of the walls of the protective shelter.

One of Jesus’ more poignant self-descriptions is found in John 10:7: “I am the gate of the sheep.” To this day, when Palestinian shepherds have to spend the night out in the open with their sheep, they typically build a shelter called a sheepfold.

They leave a single opening on one side- the “gate”- and spend the night propped up or lying down in that narrow space. They deliberately place themselves between the flock and the dangers of the world beyond.

What are you facing today that feels threatening-what worry or fear or sorrow or uncertainty?

Here’s what we know for sure. You won’t be facing it alone. There is Someone who lies between you and the worst things you can imagine.

That’s why Jesus is called the Good Shepherd.

He takes the cold spot!

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

“Clean”

Less than 200 years ago, few people suspected that we live in a world saturated with microorganisms. A handful of scientists, led by Louis Pasteur in the 1860’s had begun to discern the connection between tiny creatures and certain human diseases. But no one could have imagined that the average human body is home to hordes of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and assorted other entities that are invisible to the human eye.

How much of “you” is you? The current scientific guess is that your body is comprised of about 30 trillion human cells. You walk around with about 30 to 50 billion bacterial cells. So half of you, from a cellular perspective is not human. Most of your body’s cells, of course are immensely larger than your accompanying microbes. So you can at least be comforted that most of you is you.

Something like 40,000 different species of microorganisms are happy to use your body as a mailing address. The average bacterium lives only 20 minutes. That’s less time than it takes to watch a single episode of Family Feud on TV. Bacterium self-replicate 72 times a day. The vast majority of these hitchhikers are harmless.

Then there are the viruses, which have been much in the news in the past 18 months. They are vastly smaller than the bacteria and considerably more mysterious. There are a lot of them. Dr. Peter Medawar, the Noble Prize winning biologist, described a virus as “a piece of bad news wrapped up in a protein.”

COVID—19 is one reason why anti-microbial soaps flew off the shelves so quickly in 2020. Several brands offer this reassuring promise: “Kills 99.9% of germs.” But even if 0.1% of microorganisms remain alive, that’s a lot of germs.

Long before people began to obsess about ridding their lives of microorganisms, millions of people felt anguish about the cleanliness of their souls. In a broken world, how can we wash away-for want of a better term-the spiritual cooties of our lives? What we ourselves cannot accomplish, no matter how hard we try, God offers as a gift. The word translated “filthy” is soim, the strongest word in the Hebrew language to express something really dirty.

In our present condition, how can we ever stand before a holy God? He will have to do the cleansing. He will have to supply clean clothes and a clean heart.

And He is able to do so.

Jesus said to his disciples, “You are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you” (John 15:3)

That’s His promise to us too. The best news in the middle of a pandemic is that we can all experience the single cleansing that we most need.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

“Chosen”

Mary Ann Bird grew up feeling unlovely, unpresentable and unloved.

From birth she had been afflicted with a variety of disfiguring features. She recounts her feelings- and the moment in which everything changed- in her book, The Whisper Test: “I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech.”

There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored-Mrs. Leonard by name. She was short, round, happy-a sparkling lady. “Annually we had a hearing test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and finally it was my turn. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something and we would have to repeat it back-things like “the sky is blue” or “Do you have new shoes?”

“I waited there for those words that God must have put in her mouth, those seven words that changed my life.” Mrs. Leonard said in a whisper, “I wish you were my little girl.”

Mary Ann Bird ultimately became a teacher herself-the kind of teacher who, like Mrs. Leonard, knew the transforming power of words. Sometimes in our most foolish moments, we fantasize how wonderful it would be to be rich, famous, powerful, respected maybe even feared. But nothing holds a candle to being loved, wanted or chosen. Jesus said to his disciples, “You didn’t choose me, remember, I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit.” (John 15:16)

It’s dismal to think that the purpose of life is to simply play the cards we are dealt, one day at a time, and that no one much cares how things turn out. It’s electrifying to learn there is someone who has chosen us-just as we are-to bear His name and to do his work.

And to live all our days knowing we are eternally wanted.

Faithfully,
Ron Naylor, Chaplain

“Words Matter”

According to Greek legend it took the hero Odysseus 10 years to reach home by journeying the Mediterranean Sea after the Trojan War. But that’s nothing. So far an armada of plastic toys has been at sea for 29 years. And some of them have gone halfway around the world.

The great Plastic Duck Odyssey began on January 19, 1992 when a Pacific storm slammed the container ship Ever Laurel somewhere near the International Date Line. The ship was journeying from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington where it was scheduled to deliver, among other things, thousands of bathtub toys.

The storm sent a dozen containers overboard. One of them split open and spilled 28,000 yellow ducks, blue turtles and red beavers. Those durable, watertight plastic creatures, collectively called “Friendly Floaters” were intended to delight American children at bath time. Instead they have become playful international symbols of the object of careful scientific scrutiny.

It appears that approximately 18,000 of the toys went south, where they washed up on the shores of Australia, Indonesia and South America. The other 11,000 or so have taken a northern route washing up in Alaska and British Columbia. Others rode the big surf in Hawaii. Some of the ducks, turtles and frogs-on their way to Cape Cod and the coast of Maine-drifted over the spot where Titanic sank in1912. Still others caught by the Gulf Stream have begun to turn up in Scotland and England-17,000 miles from the point where their Pacific bath began.

Along the way, it dawned on oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer-looking for something interesting to do in his retirement-to track ocean currents. Even after centuries of human adventure on the seas, scientists knew next to nothing about the oceanic “rivers” of warm and cold water that circulate from continent to continent.

Ebbesmeyer, with the help of people around the world who are faithfully reporting yellow ducks and red beaver sightings, is beginning to fill in gaps in our knowledge.

Here’s one thing we know already: Things that are sent adrift on the ocean don’t stay in the same place very long.

Never was a truer word spoken about the words we speak.

Whenever we open our mouths, it’s as if we are emptying an industrial container. Our words go everywhere. And after we have spoken we have no way of retrieving our subtle digs, our exaggerations, our judgments and our snarky commentaries. Just ask anyone who has ever been a marriage partner, a business associate or a friend. Some of the most regrettable comments are still washing up on distant shores 20 years later.

THE WORDS WE SPEAK HAVE THE CAPACITY TO CHANGE REALITY.

Something actually happens when we speak. Your words still seem to be “out there” somewhere endlessly rolling on the tide.

The Apostle James marveled at the tongue’s capacity both to heal and to harm. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. “A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it?” (James 3:10-11)

Starting today we can bless others. That will no doubt include speaking less and listening carefully. And refusing above all, not to go negative.

“Let us therefore encourage one another and build each other up.” (I Thessalonians 5:11) By God’s grace, such words of blessing can ride the currents and still will be washing up on shores for years to come.

Faithfully,

Ron Naylor, Chaplain