Money for bread

A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of WWII, was called by adoring New Yorkers 'the Little Flower' because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.




Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor." the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson." LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions--ten dollars or ten days in jail." But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero saying: "Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant." So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.



Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, Multnomah, 1990, pp 91-2.

How God treats repentant sinners

When Billy Graham was driving through a small southern town, he was stopped by a policeman and charged with speeding. Graham admitted his quilt, but was told by the officer that he would have to appear in court.

The judge asked, "Guilty, or not guilty?" When Graham pleaded guilty, the judge replied, "That'll be ten dollars -- a dollar for every mile you went over the limit."

Suddenly the judge recognized the famous minister. "You have violated the law," he said. "The fine must be paid--but I am going to pay it for you." He took a ten dollar bill from his own wallet, attached it to the ticket, and then took Graham out and bought him a steak dinner! "That," said Billy Graham, "is how God treats repentant sinners!"

Progress Magazine, December 14, 1992.

Better Story

"Do in life what makes for a better story."

--Craig Warren's facebook status (anonymous) 

A Surprising God

I just love it when God ends up being much better than my beliefs about God.

--Paul Carpenter's Facebook Status

Every age and every generation

Every age has its own exodus.  --Shane Claiborne

And every generation needs a new Moses.  --John M. Perkins

--Follow Me to Freedom p 43

Hope for peace

In the year 2000, Tommy Tarrants and I traveled together to Amman, Jordan, to speak at an international meeting on peace. So there we were: Tommy, a former Ku Klux Klansman, and myself, a black from Mississippi, standing next to a lineup of Nobel Prize winners for peace and reconciliation. The kind of Jordan was there with his delegates too. He said, “When a black man from Mississippi and a white Ku Klux Klansman can become friends, there is hope for the Jews and Arabs.” That was wonderful. But hope has to be in Jesus Christ! The reconciliation came because that Ku Klux Klansman met Jesus Christ and because that black boy from Mississippi met Jesus Christ. It was His death on the cross that pulled this white supremacist and me together. Only because Jesus reconciled us could we stand side by side on a platform next to the king of Jordan as a symbol of hope for peace in the Middle East.


--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 42

God switches sides

"We are all tempted with the counterfeit power our hands can wield and the sense that we are invincible because God is on our side.  That's precisely when God starts to switch sides.

--Shane Claiborne in Follow Me to Freedom p 41

God has called you for this moment

There has to come a time in your pilgrimage when you become conscious that God put you in a specific place, for a specific time and He’s leading you. It’s fearful. It’s painful. It’s too big for you. Moses experienced all of these things. But, like him, you must feel that quiet sense of serenity that God has called you for this moment. It is humbling.


I don’t talk about this much, but I knew my time had come when almost a hundred men would come at night and protect my house. It was Mississippi in the mid-1960’s, and the civil rights movement was already going. Those men would say, “You go to bed. We’ll protect these kids. You are here to do what we can’t do, and it’s our task to protect you.” That’s when I knew that God had called me. These men were so noble. They loved me so dearly. They were old men, and they had been dreaming and longing for someone to come and lead them. I respected them so much that I was afraid of them.

--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 39

Everything he had been trained to do...

One of the most popular preachers I’ve heard in a long time was an astronaut named Scott Carpenter. In February 1962, Carpenter became the second American to orbit Earth. Upon reentry, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned, and he had to manually take control of his mercury-Atlas 7 rocket. It was one of the most successful on the early NASA missions. Carpenter is a humble guy, but to hear him tell the story is to hear a powerful message on courage. He says, all he did on that flight was everything that he had been taught to do. And though he maneuvered the spacecraft with precision, he felt it (and his own life) might be lost. Finally he brought Mercury-Atlas 7 in for a slash landing—several hundred miles off course, but safe.


--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 28

[Note—what struck me is that he did what he was trained to do. When all else fails and you don’t know what to do, you do the obvious. Greatest commandments—love God, love neighbor. You seek God in prayer, fasting, worship. You find a way to serve and love people in the name of Christ.]

Give it away

...Just goes to prove that the best way to take away money's power is to give it away.  Keep doing that, and eventually it won't be worth much.  Meaning will be left to relationships and friendships and the sense of community.

--Shane Claiborne in Follow Me to Freedom p 37

Why Not?

In the stage play Back to Methuselah, George Bernard Shaw wrote, "You see things; and you say, 'Why?'  But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'

I knew it

One day, before an important meeting with some important people who had come to Jackson to see me, my wife, Vera Mae, came over with Varah [my granddaughter] and her bicycle, which had two flats. Varah softly asked, “Grandpa, will you fix my bike?” I’m thinking, I ain’t got time. “Will you fix my bike?” I thought about it a few seconds, looked into her eyes that were calling out to me and then said, “Sure. The people here to meet me can wait. I’m going to do this right now.”


I got my pump going and fixed her flat. Itonly took me a few minutes. Iput her on her bike and pushed her. I had taught her how to ride the bike. I had put her first training wheelson and was with her the first time she ever went without them. There was no way I could leaver herwith two flats. When she learned to swim, I was in the swimming pool and taught her. She thinks her granddaddy can do everything. (Don’t tell her otherwise!) And when I fixed her flats, I said, “You know, you’re the most important person in my life right now.” With her little smile, she said, “I knew it, but I wouldn’t say it.”

Oh, man! She knew it! What if I had blown the chance to affirm her? Children (and grandchildren) need to know they are important.

--John M. Perkins in Follow Me to Freedom p 28

Tell Me Why

One spring, in the early 1980’s, the great American folk preacher and storyteller Tex Evans was to preach one Sunday at a Methodist church in Maryland. The special occasion was the tow hundredth anniversary of the day when Methodism’s apostle to America, Francis Asbury, crossed the nearby river on horseback to preach to the gathered townspeople and plant a new Methodist church. Before the service, several men strolled with Tex the fifty yards to the river that Asbury and his horse once crossed. One man reported, “The rains had been heavy that spring. The river was swollen and raging; it was perilous to cross it. Do you want us to tell you how Asbury and his horse came across the river?” Tex reflected and said, “No. I want you to tell me why he crossed it!”


The men could not tell him. They had no idea, no clue. Evans scrapped his planned address, scribbled some notes on a card, and in his sermon explained to the people what is in Christianity’s good news and in the experience of truth and power that would compel someone to bring the good news, at personal risk, to people. The pathology that Evans discovered in a church in Maryland was not an isolated problem. Most churches in North America and Europe, and many churches on all of the other continents, are afflicted with amnesia. They no longer remember who they are; they have forgotten their main business. As Paul Little once observed, “Most churches are not fishers of men; they are keepers of the aquarium!”

--George G. Hunter III in The Apostolic Congregation p 29

On Social Justice: Taking charity to the next level

“Beyond the United States, on all inhabited continents, some churches that have been reaching pre-Christian people are discovering that Christians are called to be kingdom people who work to change communities and nations. Churches that for years have dispensed medicine to sick children now also work for clean water and sanitation so there will be fewer sick children. Churches that have ministered to AIDS patients and their families now also work for the laws and lifestyle changes that will prevent many people form ever contracting AIDS. Churches that have helped poor people are now also digging wells; starting schools; pioneering cottage industries; advocating for roads, electricity and jobs; and engaging in other interventions to help abjectly poor people reach the lowest step on the economic ladder. A recent global study demonstrates that many Pentecostal churches in the branch of Christianity long considered the least socially prophetic are now socially engaged and are changing communities.”

--George G. Hunter III in The Apostolic Congregation p 35

Through the grapvine...

"Jesus gave us a powerful symbol in John 15 for this relationship of participating in the work of God. The image is that of a grapevine. The thick, long vine grows along the ground or attaches itself by tendrils to another tree or a frame. From the vine, little branches shoot out, intertwining as they climb. From these branches the clusters of grapes come forth. A cultivated grapevine may grow very long and high, with many bunches of fruit hanging down.

The grapevines had long been a symbol for Israel, God’s people. Commentator Ray Summers notes that on the temple in Jerusalem, a huge grapevine was carved into the stone of the entrance. Its trunk rose higher than a person and its branches spread out farther above, adorned with rich gold leaves and bunches of gilded grapes. Moreover, during the brief time of Israel’s revolt against Rome, the coins minted bore the grapevine as the symbol of the nation. The grapevine served as an image of hope that the people could be something fruitful for their God.

But in reality, the grapevine became a reminder of failure. The Hebrew prophets often employed this figure of speech in terms of judgment (see Isaiah 5:1-10): Israel, the vine that had not produced the fruit God expected. Instead of choice fruit, wild grapes had sprung forth worthless either for wine or food. God’s people, by their own efforts, could not fulfill their task in the world.

Jesus, however, employed the symbol in a new way. Summers suggests that the conversation recorded in John 15, on the night before the crucifixion, may have taken place near the Temple, under the light of the Passover moon, with its beams shining upon the engraved vine on the temple entrance. Here Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches” (John 15:5). This understanding is crucial. Jesus took Israel’s place. He stood in for God’s people as the one who is expected to produce the fruit of obedience, worship, and faithfulness. In effect, Jesus said, “I am that vine on the Temple. I have come to be the source, the very plant that produces fruit for God. Now you are the branches that grown from me, the vine. You are the tiny shoots that come forth and in due season bear the grapes. So stay connected to me.”

Jesus’ image was stunningly obvious. Branches don’t try to live apart from the vine. They are just there, effortlessly letting the vine produce its life through them, resulting in a harvest of grapes. No branch leaps off the tree. No branch tries to do anything. Branches simply remain, held by the vine, yielding fruit. We are to do the same. Not remaining in the vine has predictable consequences: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. …Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). Cut off from the vine, the branches might as well be thrown away. Apart from Christ, we can do nothing.

…What are we supposed to do in the world for God? We begin by abiding in the vine. Moment by moment as life happens around us, we say, “Jesus, produce your life in me. I will go where ou send me. I offer my life in your service to those around me—not because I am even able to be available to you but because you have grafted me into the vine. You produce fruit through me.” Living reliance on the vine makes radical availability possible.

…This reliance runs counter to our usual thinking. We chastise ourselves: I must do more for God. It seems impossible that doing nothing for God of our own will accomplishes far more. It feels as if we’ll just be sitting around singing while the world dies. But as we begin to abide in the vine, inviting Jesus to produce his life in us and getting ourselves out of the way, our lives will become fruitful beyond imagination.

--Companions in Christ pp191-192, 194