Youth Ministry Initiative

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Year of Publication

2003

From Harold Masback, Forgiven not Condemned he Restoreth My Soul" (September 21, 2003) at pages 3-5:

It didn’t get any better than this. A hot summer day. No school. Playing stickball against my kid brother in the Pitney Bowes parking lot next to our apartment building. My beloved Giants beating the pants off of his Red Sox in our imaginary world series. My “Juan Marichal” pitching to his “Frank Malzone” when suddenly a rock came whizzing across my shoulder. I wheeled around to see my nemesis, the red haired, freckle-faced Guy Cruikshank chucking rocks at us and blocking our only escape route to Mamaroneck Avenue.
We sat in the owner’s apartment, the driver lecturing me before letting me call my parents. It was the worst trouble I had ever been in. When my Dad picked up the phone, my voice broke penitently as I strained to pick up any sign of just how mad he was, but all he said was that he was on his way over.The next five minutes were the proverbial longest of my life as I rehearsed my apology in my mind and contemplated my approaching beating, banishment or worse. My eyes were glued on the door, kind of imagining my dad’s glowering face, storming across the room at me.The doorbell rang; the owner opened the door, my dad brushed by him and rushed right over to fold me up in a huge hug. The driver talked about how he hoped my Dad would talk some sense into me. My father just wrote out a check for the damage, a substantial advance on my allowance, and, looking up, said, “We will certainly be talking about this, and I doubt he will ever do this again. But this is my son. Don’t you ever put my son or anybody else’s child into a car and drive them away again. I’ve called the police. You can tell them your side of the story when they get here.” He took me by the hand and we were off.

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2003

From Harold Masback, The Not so Secret Gift" (December 21, 2003) at pages 9-11:

The ancient rabbis told a story of a man who had two sons. The father was a very successful farmer, and when he died, he left his lands to his two sons. Over the course of time, one of the sons, Samuel, married a beautiful young woman and raised a family of six fine children. The other son, Lemuel, never married. The two brothers farmed their land together, and everything they harvested, they divided equally. The grain was placed in two barns, one for each brother.
Well, of course, as these stories go, the married brother, Samuel, was going over his books as well, and he said to himself, “I have been so blessed in life. God has prospered my farm and my brother has always been a loving uncle to my children. I have my wife and six children to take care of me when I am old, but my brother will have no one. He will need more than his share to store up against old age, but he will never agree to accept a larger share of the harvest.”And so Samuel got up as well in the dead of night, while his brother was surely asleep, went out to the barn and began carrying sack after sack of grain across the fields to Lemuel’s barn. Now, this went on night after night, each brother removing some of his own grain to his brother’s barn, so that every morning the stacks in each barn were still of equal size. And they just couldn’t figure it out. Every morning both Samuel and Lemuel went out to their respective barns and scratched their heads. “Now didn’t I just carry twenty sacks of grain to my brother’s barn last night? What happened?”Well, this went on for some weeks until one night, when the moon was full, Samuel and Lemuel bumped into each other in the field mid-way between their two barns. And when they each realized what the other brother had been doing, they began to weep tears of gratitude, dropped their sacks of grain, and embraced with joy.And just then, clouds drifted across the face of the shining moon, and it began to rain. Do you know what it was? It was the tears of God, who was also weeping for gratitude and joy, grateful because two of his children had finally, finally gotten the point.

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From Harold Masback, Faith Changes Everything" (January 11, 2004):

When I was a boy, our Sundays were bracketed by two unvarying routines: going to church in the morning, and watching Walt Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” in the evening. Dinner, rough-housing with my brother, even the odd head fake at homework had to give way to plunking down in front of our old black and white TV set to watch the show. And I know this would have disappointed the marketing geniuses at RCA and NBC, but I don’t remember it seeming even a little bit odd that we were watching “The Wonderful World of Color” . . . in black and white. Our TV had always been black and white, every show we had ever watched had been black and white, that’s just the way television world was – even “The Wonderful World of Color” . . . black and white. Color just wasn’t a possibility.

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2004

From Harold Masback, Faith: The Way Through" (January 25, 2004):

When I was six years old I had surgery in the days when ether was the anesthesia of choice. I woke up with a choking thirst, but the surgeon patiently explained that if I drank any water I would vomit all over my body cast. But who was the surgeon to tell me what I needed and what I would do? I was aflame with thirst and sensed not even a trace of nausea in my gut. I whined, I begged and I argued for my little superior understanding until finally the surgeon gave me up to my thirst and handed me a cup of water. Well you all know what happened. Like the rest of creation, biology is an act-consequence system, and it wasn’t 30 seconds before I had vomited all over my body cast – a particularly unpleasant consequence I had to live with for two weeks.

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1986

From Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him the Savior, 1986, pp 158-9:

Or consider this story told by Max Lucado. Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world. Discontent with the grinding poverty of her home, she dreamed of a better life in the city. One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother’s heart. Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her. On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing. Pictures. She sat in the photograph booth, spending all she could on pictures of herself, and, with her purse full of small black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio. Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money. She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up. When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search. Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place a destitute young woman might end up. And at each place she left her picture-taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth. And on the back of each photo she wrote a note. It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home. The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village. It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her dream had become a nightmare. A thousand times over she had longed to trade her grim new life for the love of her humble home. Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation. Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” She did. RefMgr field[18]: 2004

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2004

From Harold Masback, Blest Be the Ties that Bind" (September 26, 2004) at pages 7-9:

For the past ten years I’ve had the privilege of counseling scores of young couples before their weddings. I’ve listened as they shared their hopes and dreams for their married lives. Their stories offer an informal survey of how young Americans hope to get through life, the bulwarks they are counting on to hold their marriages together. They all use different vocabulary to describe their commitments, but their answers almost always fall into one or both of two categories. The first category speaks of romance, attraction, and feelings; the second category speaks of contract, reciprocity, and pragmatism. Both categories reflect the individual-centered culture in which we have all been raised, and neither provides any enduring insulation against the universal acid of individualism. When the couple is counting on the romance, attraction, or feelings to undergird their commitment, they say things like, “We know we’re right for each other because we are so much in love.” “I feel things for her I’ve never felt for anyone else.” “I can’t imagine feeling this way about any other guy.” These are lovely expressions of romantic love, one of the most powerful phenomena in nature. And, if the romantic poets were right that falling in love is forever, then these feelings would carry a couple for a lifetime. But most of us have lived long enough to learn that emotions wax and wane and wax and wane across a lifetime, and this commitment is inherently conditional. The overt expression is: you are the right one for me because I am in love with you, because I am attracted to you, because you make me feel a certain way. The unstated condition is that if I fall out of love, if I am no longer attracted to you, if you no longer make me feel this way, then you might no longer be the right one for me. And since I am entitled to these all-important feelings, I almost owe it to myself to seek another. When the couple is counting on the contract, reciprocity, or pragmatism foundations of commitment, they say things like, “We complement each other so well, she’s really strong at things I’m not so good at.” We’re totally committed to working things out fairly, I know if I wanted to go back to work, he would step up to do his share around the house.” “We’re really a great team, I scratch her back and she scratches mine.” These comments reflect a commitment to fairness, to contract, to reciprocity. And reciprocity is a good thing. As Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t go to your friends funerals, they won’t come to yours.” As the fund raising sign says at the volunteer fire department: “Come to our dinner and we’ll come to your fire.” But an enduring marriage requires more than contractual reciprocity. Contracts are conditional, conditioned on mutual performance; contracts are temporary, terminable when they no longer suit you as long as you pay the damages; contracts are intended to advance one’s interests and reevaluated whenever they don’t.

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2005

From Harold Masback, Why Wilderness" (December 5, 2005) at page 4:

Every little league coach knows there is just one thing that you must teach your 7 year-olds before they step into the batter’s box. We all know what it is: they must keep their eye on the ball. Nothing else makes any difference if they don’t keep their eye on the ball. They can keep their bat back, their elbow up, their back foot planted, their swing level, but if they don’t keep their eye on the ball, they’re going to whiff.

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2004

From Harold Masback, Joseph, Being a Righteous Man.." (December 19, 2004) at page 3:

Eight Christmas Eves ago we were all gathered in this meeting house singing our favorite carols and reading out the majestic texts of the night. I read out the Old Testament texts of prophecy, and then Lidabell Pollard read out the New Testament texts of fulfillment. In that quiet little lull between Lidabell’s “Amen” at the end of the Nativity story and the rustle of 500 down-clad bodies rising to sing “Silent Night”, a six year-old boy suddenly jumped up, turned to his mother and cried out, “Hey mom! That’s a great story!”

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2005

From Harold Masback, Not By Us - Through Us" (March 6, 2005) at pages 10-12:

As some of you know my good friend and college roommate was diagnosed with brain cancer last summer. By last month he had lost his ability to speak and walk. Johnny’s mind was sharp but his body was failing and death was near. I read psalms and prayed with him, but conversation was impossible. Johnny was uncomfortable with silence. As I was driving over to see him during his last week, I felt overwhelmed, exhausted and outmatched by his illness. Brick by brick Johnny’s tumor was walling him off from us and from life. I prayed “God, you’ve got to give us a little help here. I don’t know what to do. Help me be of some small comfort to my friend.” And then it just came to me; a memory of how we had studied Mozart’s 40th Symphony together 32 years before in Music 101. Johnny’s stereo cranked up full blast, his arms flailing in these ridiculous conductor’s motions he had invented, the two of us singing out the notes as he shouted “A theme, bridge, B theme, bridge.” And just as the scene faded in my mind, a voice inside said: “play Mozart’s 40th for John.” I made a mental note to pick up a copy before my next visit, but then again the voice, “No, play Mozart’s 40th for John now; you have the CD in the back of your car.” And, it turned out that I did. I’d put a bunch of CD’s in the trunk months before, and there it was amongst them. I told Johnny I had a surprise for him and slipped the CD into his stereo. He arched his eyebrow as the music came up and threw his head back and laughed as he recognized the piece. And then he picked up his good left hand and started conducting, laughing and croaking out the song as it played. He grabbed my hand, looked at me, and nodded – our eyes teared, for we both knew what he meant, and then he laughed and went back to conducting the orchestra. Five days later he was gone. I don’t understand everything that happened in that room that day. But I know God was taking care of Johnny, and I know God wasn’t taking care of Johnny by me. God was taking care of Johnny through me. Not by me – through me.

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2005

From Harold Masback, It's Not All Up to Us" (March 27, 2005) at pages 10-11:

Ashley Smith wasn’t at her best when she ran into Terry Nichols twelve days ago. She’d given up custody of her daughter; been arrested for DUI, speeding and assault; fought to stay off drugs and was out at 2:00 in the morning craving nicotine. But it wasn’t all up to her. Terry Nichols certainly wasn’t at his best when he ran into Ashley Smith twelve days ago. He was fleeing arrest for murdering four and raping one. But it wasn’t all up to him. He was armed, hopeless, and desperate; she was tied up at gunpoint and scared for her life. Left to their own capacities there are 99 ways to finish this story with a murder/shoot-out ending in them both dead; but neither was left to their own capacities.

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