Sunday, February 9, 2003
Sunday, February 9, 2003
So with yourselves; since you are eager for spiritual gifts, strive to excel in them
for building up the church.
The next day the doctor came out from town, making the last 8 miles of the trip on horseback
over terrible roads. He said that the infection seemed to be lessened, but that the child was still
very near death. If they could just get some nourishment of some kind down her, with a bit of
strength and a lot of luck, she might make it. Maybe, he said, an egg would help.
An egg! Simple suggestion, but it was the dead of winter and the hens were not laying and there
was no way to get to town. Someone went to the recently installed rural party line and rang the
neighbors. The word went out quickly. Did anyone have an egg? The baby's life depended on it.
Fortunately, one distant neighbor did! One egg was found, and the neighbor rode over with it. Into
the house he came as they rejoiced. The baby was given an eggnog of sorts, and continued her
improvement. The crisis was over, and the baby was soon well again.
The woman who wrote that account of life on an East Texas farm was Eugene Brice's mother;
the baby was his twin sister. Brice says he thinks of this occasionally when he opens the
refrigerator door and sees eggs stacked there in every season of the year. He often compares
his life, all that he has, with theirs in those far more difficult days when, in comparison to us, they
had so little. And yet, he occasionally wonders if in his entire life he has ever felt the depth of joy
they felt when that one egg was brought carefully into the house on that snowy December day of
1932. Are you able to appreciate the simple gifts from God?
(1 Corinthians 14.12
NRSV)
Dr. Eugene Brice once read an account written by a woman born near the turn of the century.
She wrote of raising a family on a farm during hard, hard times. She told about one terrible winter
when their 18-month-old daughter came down with a cold, then flu, then pneumonia, then
diphtheria. Living 18 miles from town, they resorted to home remedies and the help of neighbors.
The baby's condition, though, went downhill rapidly and they grew more desperate. The worst
night, the woman wrote, was when snow fell, making any more travel to town extremely difficult.
That night the baby lay virtually lifeless. The baby's father wrote in his journal, "Heavy snow. How
can we bury our baby in this? The blackest day of my life thus far."
Loving God, thank you for taking care of my needs with your simple gifts. Amen.
