A New Beginning

by Michael Phillips

  “Of course. I said I was going to write down very special thoughts and ideas and spiritual truths that were important and that I didn’t ever want to forget.”

  “Have you begun?”

  “I’ve done some of it.”

  “Well, that’s the kind of thing I mean. That’s what I’m doing in my journal too. Just imagine what a heritage these will be to pass on to our own sons and daughters someday.”

  “Oh, it would be. I see what you’re saying! Sometimes I so long to know what Ma was like—I mean really like down inside. I want to know what she thought about spiritual things, how she talked and listened to the Lord. I was so young then that I wasn’t able to see that part of her. Now that I am an adult myself, married, and the same age as Ma was when I have memories of her, sometimes I hunger so much to know more of what she thought and felt.”

  “I think all children long to know their parents better, especially, as you say, when they reach maturity themselves. I share that feeling so intensely, mostly for my mother because she died when I was young, but even for my father in a way too, even though I was afraid of him. I even find places of fondness occasionally springing up within me toward his memory, realizing how little he understood the role of fatherhood with which God had entrusted him. Now that I think about being a father myself, I find my feelings toward him much more tender than when I was younger.”

  “I feel it more for Ma too,” I said. “Maybe it’s because she’s gone, or because I’m her daughter. Though even as wonderful as Pa is, sometimes he can be so exasperatingly tight-lipped. I long to know what he thinks and feels too.”

  “One of the great problems we men have,” laughed Christopher.

  “That’s one of the things I love so much about you, Christopher! How can I have been so lucky as to get a man who talks and communicates!”

  “Just think what a treasure it would be if we had in our possession letters, thoughts, journals of our mothers,” he went on, not to be sidetracked by my outburst.

  “It would be priceless!”

  “Especially their spiritual ideas, their struggles, their walks with the Lord, what they placed values on, what their priorities in life were, what principles they tried to live by. What a wonderful gift to be afforded such a glimpse into our parents’ hearts.”

  I sighed. As exciting as the thought was, how could I not be saddened at the same time by the realization that I never would know my mother as well as I might wish I could—not in this life, at least.

  “That’s why I’ve begun writing down those kinds of things,” Christopher said quietly, sensing my mood. “If the Lord honors me by allowing me to be a father one day, perhaps a grandfather many years from now, I want to have just such a treasure to pass on to our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters after them—to all our descendants perhaps even into the next century—of the things that this husband and wife—you and me, Corrie—valued in our lives with God our Father.”

  I sat thinking for a moment about what Christopher had said. Then another thought occurred to me and I smiled.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “About something you said in your first sermon at the church,” I answered.

  Christopher arched his eyebrows in question, waiting for me to go on.

  “Do you remember when you said that if they made you their pastor, you would constantly challenge the people of Miracle Springs?”

  “I remember.”

  “I find your words now a great challenge to me.”

  “How so?”

  “To think of my writing as something longer lasting than newspaper articles and political elections, or even books . . . to look beyond writing to be published to the writing of spiritual truths that can be passed on to future generations—our own children and grandchildren, and who knows who else.”

  “I guess that is something like what I have been thinking, though I wasn’t consciously trying to issue a challenge.”

  “What an opportunity—to actually be able to frame a legacy to leave to those that come after you, about the times you’ve lived in, and mostly about what truths the Lord showed you about life and the world, about people, about yourself, and about him.”

  “That is exactly what the Lord has been impressing upon me. And since we both enjoy expressing ourselves with the pen, it seems we ought to be attentive to his leading.”

  “And write, you mean?”

  “Yes. I’m certain the Lord will continue to use your writings to help people know him better, Corrie, though henceforth it may be in new ways different from what he has done in the past. I hope he might even be able to find something to use in what I am compiling too.”

  “He will—I’m sure of it, Christopher. And as long as you’re part of it with me,” I said, “I will look forward to whatever changes the future brings with anticipation and eagerness.”

  Chapter 43

  A Double Tithe

  When Franklin Royce came to call again, it was one afternoon when Christopher happened to be alone at the church. The banker walked over from town rather than riding his buggy. He wanted no one to know that he and Christopher were having a private conversation, for reasons which Christopher only told me about much later.

  “You know your family tithe fund that’s in my bank?” Mr. Royce began once they were seated.

  “The church’s fund,” said Christopher.

  “Yes . . . right. A tithe is ten percent, is it not?”

  “That’s correct, Franklin.”

  “Well,” Mr. Royce went on, “I’ve been thinking more about what we talked about before . . . you remember, about Zacchaeus and returning fourfold, and all the rest.”

  Christopher nodded.

  “I’ve come up with something else I’d like to do in addition to lowering my interest rates.”

  He paused and smiled a little timidly, an altogether new and childlike expression on the face of the former Mammon-loving banker.

  “I hope you don’t think it’s silly of me, Mr. Braxton,” he said, with something like a nervous chuckle, “to try to base so much on one particular story I read in the Bible.”

  “Believe me, I find it far from silly,” replied Christopher. “I find your experience to represent the very essence of the walk of faith.”

  “Never has anything I’ve read spoken so personally and directly to me,” said the banker enthusiastically. “I do not think I exaggerate when I say that the story of that rich man Zacchaeus quite literally has changed my whole outlook on what it means to be a Christian. Suddenly it’s all so . . . so very practical, so here and now. It is exactly as you said in that sermon of yours—it’s so do-able.”

  “I’m glad you find it so, Franklin. I have always found the Christian life the most down-to-earth of all possible creeds, and the four Gospels the most practical of all guidebooks.”

  “In any event,” the banker went on, “I would like to begin giving twenty percent of all my bank’s income to the church.”

  “Twenty percent!”

  “Lowering my rates was the first thing I felt I ought to do. Now perhaps this will be the secondfold action on my part, so to speak.”

  “How do you mean secondfold?”

  “Just as Zacchaeus did. I intend to continue praying that God would show me what threefold and fourfold ways I might return some of my money to this community.”

  Christopher took in the words with a solemn sense of awe at the fact that this man before him was now seeking God’s guidance for every decision of his life.

  “Franklin,” Christopher said, “I would like to ask you a question. Do you in any way feel that this giving will make things different between you and God?”

  “Ah, I see what you mean,” replied Mr. Royce. “No, I know that God accepts me as I am and for who I am. These are things I want to do.”

  “But if I may ask another question,” said Christopher after a brief pause, “you don’t, do you, feel as though you have taken from anyone f
alsely or wrongly, as in the story of Zacchaeus?”

  “Perhaps not in so many words,” replied Mr. Royce. “I do not know that I ever broke the law, if that is what you mean. But my motive was entirely for myself and not for my neighbor. My intent was to squeeze as much profit from this community as I possibly could. So whereas perhaps I did not intentionally swindle my customers, I nevertheless profited more than was proper. I grew rich while the people of this community labored to eke out their sometimes less-than-modest livings. It was not right. So what other conclusion is to be drawn but that I did wrong?”

  “Yet perhaps the fourfold repayment of Zacchaeus is more than is required in your case.”

  “Perhaps. But all my life I have been giving less than is required. Why should I not now give more than is required. Does ever a man suffer from giving too much to God?”

  Christopher smiled. “No, Franklin,” he said. “No, I suppose not.”

  “And besides, I’m enjoying my money now far more than I ever did letting it gather dust and interest in all my various investments!”

  “Well then—I heartily endorse your plan. In fact, I think it would greatly encourage the town for you to share the impact this Scripture has had upon you one Sunday evening.”

  “Oh no,” rejoined Mr. Royce quickly. “No one must know of this. It must remain just between us two.”

  “Of course, I will respect your wishes if that is your desire. But may I ask why?”

  Again a sheepish expression came over the banker’s face.

  “I’m afraid you will eventually think me silly,” he said, “if in everything I point to some Scripture or other. But I must confess that two or three days ago I was reading—again in the Gospels, just as you recommended, although this time in Matthew—when Jesus spoke about how we are to give. You are no doubt familiar with the passage.”

  Christopher nodded knowingly, sensing what was coming.

  “He said something like, ‘Make sure when you give to the poor, that you don’t do it to be seen by other men. Don’t blow a trumpet when you do good like the Pharisees and hypocrites do. Don’t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Do it in secret so only God will see it.’ Those are my own words, of course, but that is something like it.”

  “I am familiar with the passage,” smiled Christopher. “You have captured its meaning, I think, very accurately.”

  “If ever there was a Pharisee and a hypocrite,” Mr. Royce went on, “it was me—though I cannot say I ever did much giving in my life, even to be seen by others. So if I am going to make a new start, I certainly don’t intend to blow a trumpet and announce it, as it says.”

  “Then I will happily respect your wishes,” replied Christopher. “But tell me—why do you then come to tell me of it now?”

  “Because if I merely deposited money into the church’s family-tithe account, one day it would certainly come to your notice that there was far more money present than you had deposited. I’m sure you believe in the principle of the loaves and the fishes, but you are also a practical man, Mr. Braxton, and I have no doubt you would investigate the thing, possibly mentioning it to the church committee before coming to me, and the whole affair would come out.”

  “I see,” laughed Christopher. “You have thought of everything!”

  “Now that I have you in on my little scheme, so to speak, I will be free to add to the account, and you will be free to make use of the account, without anyone else sharing our secret.”

  “I must say, Franklin,” laughed Christopher, “you are proving as shrewd in your obedience to the Scriptures as you have been as a businessman.”

  “Isn’t there something about being wise as serpents but innocent as doves?”

  “Indeed there is!”

  “And I would ask one more thing of you, Mr. Braxton . . . er, Christopher,” said the banker.

  “Name it.”

  “That if a need should arise in the community, or on the part of any individual, which cannot be met by the church fund, or which you feel would not be an appropriate expenditure, I would ask that you come to me in confidence and share it with me. There may be some way in which I can help.”

  “The third and fourthfold repayment you spoke of?”

  Mr. Royce nodded. “Though such was always my goal up until a very short time ago, I do not want to die a rich man. Therefore I must find worthy means to dispose of my wealth gradually and quietly and without show. I can think of no more worthy means than investing in the lives of those in need.”

  “I will certainly do as you ask, Franklin,” replied Christopher, fighting back the tears that now sought to rise in his eyes.

  Mr. Royce stood and the two men shook hands, almost as if they were now business colleagues who had entered into a new agreement. In truth, as Christopher said when he told me of the interview, it was an eternal partnership in the affairs of the kingdom.

  Chapter 44

  Learning to Wait

  It was on a Sunday midway through the fall of that year when Christopher shared another very personal message from his heart. This one had more to do with me.

  “Ever since Corrie and my decision to remain here in Miracle Springs,” he began, “I have been struggling within my own heart to understand the events leading up to that decision. I have said nothing publicly about it, and actually, Corrie and I have not spoken about it a great deal either.

  “To be perfectly honest, I have been embarrassed about this and have felt the need to understand it myself before being able to talk to anyone else about it. At last I have come to feel some perspective dawning which I would like to share this morning with you—and with my dear wife too,” he added, looking at me with a smile. “I have stressed the necessity of obedience so frequently that I hope this will be helpful to you in those circumstances in which you are uncertain about what exactly obedience might mean.”

  He paused to collect his thoughts, took in a couple of breaths, then continued.

  “Oftentimes for the Christian man or woman, the Lord’s leading in a certain direction is very quiet and subtle at first,” he said. “You begin simply to sense something stirring deep in the hidden regions of your mind or heart. Have any of you had that experience?”

  He paused, and a few heads nodded.

  “You might not even know what it is at first,” Christopher went on. “It may be the beginning of the Lord’s leading, or it may not be. But it has been my experience that if it is the Lord’s voice, that sense will gradually grow stronger over the next weeks and months. If it is not, then gradually it will go away.

  “Now when that sense I speak of does begin to grow stronger, two more things begin to happen. They move you closer to the point of one day being able to say you are confident that you are hearing God’s voice and that you are thus ready to do what he is telling you.

  “The first of these factors is—specificity. The gradual sense you felt initially in an undefined way becomes more and more specific. Instead of just having a vague feeling, you find your thoughts beginning to focus on something specific to do.

  “The second factor has to do with circumstances. Events and situations begin to line up in your life in such a way as to make the doing of that specific thing possible.

  “All right, are you with me so far?” he asked, glancing around the church. “First comes a feeling of some direction, followed by specificity and circumstances which ultimately will make obedience possible.” He continued to wait a moment more.

  “Now let me tell you how this worked for me last year,” he went on. “At first I began to feel a vague sense that perhaps my days of ministry were not over after all, as I had previously thought. As I continued to pray, this sense grew stronger. I eventually began to feel what I thought was the Lord saying that a time was coming when I would serve him in a new place in a new way. You see, the sense that I first felt grew gradually stronger and more specific.”

  Christopher stopped and smiled.

  “It
was all going according to the proper order up to this point. But then . . . I made a mistake,” he said. “I put the cart before the horse, so to speak. Circumstances hadn’t yet developed in my life to focus that leading into some specific direction and toward some definite course of action the Lord wanted me to follow.

  “So what did I do? I’m embarrassed to say it, but I now realize that I went out on my own, without the Lord’s leading, and tried to manufacture my own set of circumstances into which I then tried to fit the partial leading that had come to me at the time.

  “Time, patience, and waiting upon the Lord—these are all critical elements in discerning and obeying the Lord’s voice. Sometimes the specificity and the circumstances take a long while to develop. If we’re not careful, having received a preliminary sense in a given direction, we can go charging off prematurely on our own without waiting for the rest of God’s leading. In so doing we leave the Lord and his guidance behind.

  “This is exactly what I did. What I thought I heard from the Lord was indeed accurate—he was preparing to use me in a new place in a new way. I think I was hearing his voice in a true direction. But I did not wait. I began to infuse into that leading my own interpretation of what I concluded God must be planning to do.

  “I did not wait for circumstances to confirm God’s direction, I acted impatiently and created my own circumstances. And as you all know—Corrie best of all—I began making plans for us to return to the East, because that was how I assumed he intended to carry out the leading I had felt.

  “Of course, we all realize now that I was wrong. Circumstances did eventually come, in this case sad circumstances for us all, which prevented my continuing on my mistake and brought me back to the specific course of action the Lord intended all along—which was to remain right here among you in Miracle Springs.”

  Christopher paused again and glanced at me with an earnest and loving expression.