Saints and Sinners: Part 1 — Favorite Bible verses
I was once the moderator of a weekly radio broadcast titled “The Bible Speaks to You.” I liked the title because it more or less said it all. The Bible speaks to “all sorts and conditions of men” (and women), although its message may be different for each.
I was reminded of this while reading the almost infinite variety of responses from correspondents replying to our Favorite Bible Verses poll.
The entries ran the gamut from the sublime to the humorous. Some respondents veered from the assigned topic to explore related matters of interest to them.
There was Barbara Rees who wrote: “You were so right a couple of years ago when you said that perfume keeps a lot of people away from church. I have asthma and chemical sensitivity. If I go to church, I’m sick for two days in bed after that. You sure know what you are talking about.” OK, thanks.
One of Zelma Prewett’s favorite Bible verses is Psalm 141:3: “‘Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; and keep the door of my lips.’ This one I have to pray many, many times. In a pinch, I’ll say a quick prayer: ‘Lord, put your arms around me and your hand over my mouth.’ This little prayer is repeated by me many times and I still get in trouble opening my mouth when I should ‘be still and know (He is) God.'”
Jerry Nelson, whose favorite Bible verse is the 23rd Psalm, recalls the winter of 1943 when he was a gunner with the U.S. forces in Italy. “Things were bad,” he writes, “weather, mountains, strong enemy lines, bad food, homesickness.” The soldier prayed and said, “God, things are so bad down here and you have to help us. But you have to come yourself. Don’t send Jesus. This is no place for a kid.”
A respondent who signs her note “Dorothy,” recounts the mirthful tale of an old-timer named Jake whose battered pickup truck broke down on a deserted road on a windy, snowy night in Wyoming. He wasn’t the praying kind but in this crisis he “humbly bowed his balding head and sent aloft a prayer.” Alas, “they found Jake three days later, frozen stiff in that old truck.” When Jake got to heaven, he complained to St. Peter, “I’ve always heard that God will answer prayer. But one time when I asked for help, he just plain wasn’t there.”
St. Peter replied, “So you’re the one. That day your truck, it wouldn’t start and you sent your prayer a-flying.
“You gave us all a real bad time, with hundreds of us trying. A thousand angels rushed to check the status of your file.
“But you know, Jake, we hadn’t heard from you in quite a while. And though all prayers are answered, and God ain’t got no quota, he didn’t recognize your voice, and started a truck in North Dakota.”
Jake is one of those readers Mary Jane Grafton tells us about in her couplet, “Many who plan to seek God at the 11th hour die at 10:30.”
The “favorite Bible passage” of Joan Conover (“This too shall pass”) may not be from the Bible at all, she concedes, “but it has got me through many rough spots in my life: the deaths of loved ones, the breakups of serious relationships, loss of income, life-threatening illness and major surgery.”
“I really think that many suicides could be avoided if the person would say, ‘This too shall pass.’ Usually the next day is much brighter. Sometimes it takes a little longer but it has always worked.”
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)