PROPER 23-C, October 14, 2007

Once upon a time, the story is told, two men, Bill and Jim, lived in a nursing home. Both had been brought there in their old age by ambulance and knew that they would spend their last months confined to their room. Because of the nature of their illnesses both had to keep unusually quiet and still -- no reading, no radio, certainly no television. They had no visitors either. Their only entertainment was to talk to each other.

Jim had to spend all of his time flat on his back. Bill, as part of his treatment, was allowed to sit up for an hour each day. His bed was next to the window; and every afternoon, when he was propped up for his hour, he would pass the time by describing to Jim what he could see outside. Jim lived for those hours. Bill would look out the window and describe a beautiful park with a lake, where there were ducks and swans and children throwing them bread and sailing model boats.

He described young men playing softball, people flying kites; the flowers and the trees and young lovers walking hand-in-hand through the grass. He told Jim about the skyline of the city he could see off in the distance. One day there was a parade and Bill described every float and every band. Jim listened intently and enjoyed every minute. He was visualizing everything Bill was describing.

The one afternoon Jim thought to himself, "Just wait a minute! Why should Bill have all the fun? Why does he have all the pleasure? Why does he get the bed by the window?" In a few days Jim turned sour. He was bitter, angry, resentful. He brooded and seethed. He became obsessed by wanting to be by the window. And each passing hour he became more and more resentful of Bill.

The one night, quite suddenly, Bill died. His body was taken away the next morning. As soon as it seemed decent, Jim asked if he could be moved to the bed next to the window. They moved him, tucked him in, and made him quite comfortable. Then they left him alone. The minute they had gone, against the doctor's orders, Jim struggled with all his might to prop himself up on one elbow so that he could look out the window. Imagine his surprise. It faced a blank brick wall.

The story of Bill and Jim reminded me of one of my all-time favorite stories that I have read in Guideposts. It has been re-printed several times. It was told by Patricia Houck Sprinkle. It tells about a plain, old shoemaker's awl that is on prominent display in the French Academy of Science.

What makes this awl so special? It was the awl that fell one day from the shoemaker's table and put out the eye of his nine-year-old son who was playing underneath the table. Soon the child became blind in both eyes and was forced to attend school for the blind. At this school, the child learned to read by handling large, curved wooden blocks. When the shoemaker's son grew up, he thought of a new way for the blind to read. It involved punching dots on paper. Louis Braille devised this new method by using the same awl that had blinded him to create a whole new reading system for the blind.

There will be a brick wall or a falling awl in each one of our lives. The choice is ours as to how it will affect us. In Patricia Sprinkle's words, "When it strikes, some of us will ask, 'Why did God allow this to happen?' Others ask, "How will God use it?'"

Everything that happens to us gives us an opportunity to do something good -- even with the bad. Bill no more wanted to be in that nursing home than did Jim -- than would anyone of us. Louis Braille no more wanted that awl to cause his blindness than you or I would want some accident to injure us. But bad things happen to each one of us -- just as they happened to Jeremiah, just as they happened to Paul, just as they happened to those ten people when they contracted leprosy. And in all truth, like Bill and Jim and Louis Braille, no one of them and no one of us ever really deserves the bad that happens to us. But it happens. And when it happens, we have to ask, as Patricia Sprinkle reminds us, "How will God use it?"

God chose Jeremiah at a very young age to be his spokesman. Jeremiah did not want to accept that responsibility, not just because he was so young and because he didn’t think anyone would listen to him. Rather, he knew what was in store for him: persecution, rejection, even pain and suffering. Yet Jeremiah accepted God’s call because he knew God would take care of him even if some pain and suffering was inevitable.

God used Paul, who was beaten, whipped, ship wrecked, jailed, hated, persecuted and abused to become the Apostle to the Gentiles. God used those who were afflicted with leprosy to teach others about His Son. And God uses us -- if we let God. Jeremiah could have refused God’s call. Paul could have called it quits at any time instead of spreading the message of the faith. The lepers could have wallowed in their misery and never presented themselves to Jesus. Bill could have told Jim the truth instead of giving him hope. Louise Braille could have allowed his blindness conquer him instead of him conquering it. Everything that happens to us is an opportunity -- an opportunity for us to make the bad that has happened to us into something good or an opportunity to allow the good to turn to something even better.

An old Jewish Rabbi made the wise observation: "When someone asks you how things are, don't whine and grumble about your hardships. For if you answer, 'Things are lousy, bad, awful' then God can easily say, 'You call this bad? I'll show you what bad really is.' When asked how things are and, despite hardship and suffering, you answer, 'Good,' then God can say, 'You call this good? I'll show you what good really is.'"

The first rule of life, I suspect, is a reminder no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. No matter how good they are, they can always be better. The second rule is, bad is never good and good is never bad, but the bad can always be made better and so can the good -- all with God's help, of course; all with God's grace, as today's Collect reminds us.

What I am talking about is healing. It takes healing to make the bad into good, or at least make the bad better than it was. It takes an inner healing. That inner healing takes place when we begin to accept the bad situation that we are in like Bill and Louis Braille and Jeremiah and Paul, like the lepers in today’s Gospel who knew they were outcasts, but did let that not stop them from asking for healing.

My mother, who is almost 94, has painful arthritis, but that does not stop her from living. She has her good days and she has her bad days. Yet even her good days are filled with pain. But she has chosen to live while dyeing rather than die while dying. My mother crochets and knits everyday to keep her hands flexible. She made this for me. I show it to you not only because I am proud of it but also because it is a reminder to me that I, too, can choose to live while dying or die while dying. The same choice is yours as well. Bill, Louis, Jeremiah, Paul all chose to live on their way to death. We are all on our way to death. How we live on the way is what is important.

Today's lessons are a reminder to all of us that the first step in the healing process is to admit that we need healing, that we are not whole – that this hospital room, this blindness, this leprosy, this rejection, this persecution, this arthritis will be with us. It will not go away, at least not for the moment and maybe not ever. The second step is to ask what we, with God's help, will do with it to make our own life and the lives of others, if not a whole lot better, at least a little less painful.

Whatever happens to us in this life is always a God-given opportunity to allow God to work in and through us. But it is up to us. God won't make the bad better without us because God can't do it without us. For as Christians we believe that God works in and through us, even, perhaps especially, during those times when we least expect it – when we hurt.