Selah! So It Is said, Let It Be Done!
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About this ebook
This book is intended to introduce life situations which many of us experience. Some are very serious and others are more lighthearted. But all of them are intended to induce the reader to think about what they might do in these circumstances and how to apply the Christian guiding principles to them. This book is intended to help the reader to read, think and grow into a more mature Christian.
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Selah! So It Is said, Let It Be Done! - Dr. Michael Bunch
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
This Is for Esmerelda!
Puppy Love!
A Miracle in Kisumu
Can I Talk to Jenny?
December 19, 1933
Just Enough
Dance with Me, Daddy?
Gary Is in a Hurry
Elijah, His Son, and the Huffy
Dirty Old Brown Shoes
The Menagerie
One Fine Day
The Cabinetmaker
Tonopah
Play Ball, Boys
That Little Old Lady
It Depends on How You Look at It
The Chief and His Friend
Oh, Johnny Boy
A Song for Michael
Tail of Two Sparrows
The Rabbit and the Squirrel
A Shadow
Gabe Weeps Coming Home
Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice!
Selah!
About the Author
cover.jpgSelah! So It Is said, Let It Be Done!
Dr. Michael Bunch
ISBN 979-8-88644-391-2 (Paperback)
ISBN 979-8-88644-392-9 (Digital)
Copyright © 2023 Dr. Michael Bunch
All rights reserved
First Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.
Covenant Books
11661 Hwy 707
Murrells Inlet, SC 29576
www.covenantbooks.com
This Is for Esmerelda!
Esmerelda Hamilton was the seventh in a family of eight exceptionally poor family living in Georgetown, Guiana. Her father was loving, kind, and exceptionally hardworking. Her mother was as you might guess consumed with taking care of eight children while at the same time trying to work so that they might have enough money to eat. Despite much of the local business dealings being spoken in Guyanese Creole, which is a mix of African and East Indian, most of the people there understand English as until 1966, it had been an English colony. Esmerelda's father was fluent in both English and the local dialects. That helped him greatly when looking for work, but work was not always easy to find. He spent most of his time in the sugar cane fields, doing backbreaking work for very little pay. He had once tried to find work in the Bauxite mine, but the cost of travel to get to and from the mine consumed nearly three-fourths of his wages, and well, it just was not worth the effort as he had a small tribe of mouths to feed. He was diligent and hardworking, and when not actually being paid for a job, he was working hard trying to find another job. Esmerelda's mother was just as hardworking. She quite simply bordered on being a saint as she always managed to find enough rice for the children even when she did not feel hungry!
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the economy of Guiana virtually collapsed due the ever-increasing price of oil products and the devastating fall in the price of sugar and Bauxite. These were very hard times, which made keeping the family together even harder than ever before. But her parents were, as I have already told you, very hard working and prayerful people who simply would not give up. Her mother started a small cottage industry shop, making hand brooms out of the local palm fronds, which employed all of the children in the gathering of the fronds and making the small brooms. They did not sell for much only a few pennies each, but it was the difference between eating one or two meals a day. Later that year, her father took on dangerous work in the gold mine as safety procedures were nonexistent, which kept him away from the home for months at a time. But it had to be done, and he would reluctantly kiss his beloved wife good buy for three months then to return for a week for rest then go back to the mines again. It was a very hard life. It was filled with hard work and great love.
In 1989, the socialist government made a bid for a loan from the international monetary fund. As a requirement to get the loan, it had to divest itself of the banking and industrial sectors it had nationalized in 1966. It took nearly a year to do that, but once it was accomplished, the once-dead economy became anemic, then marginal, and after two years, the new free market changes caused it to come roaring back. What remained of the state enterprises declined and eventually failed. New businesses were being started every week, and then the government made a bid to encourage international tourism to draw wealthy Europeans to the pristine white beaches and the crystal waters where marlin and other trophy fish might be had. It worked; soon, there were more jobs to go around, and Esmeralda's father finally found a job as a bell hop in a new hotel within walking distance from their ramshackle tin house. Some weeks he made more in tips than in salary. He was finally able to earn enough money to put three solid meals on the table each day, and eventually, there was a little extra for a small TV. And much to his great delight, he was finally able to afford to buy and then pay for the electricity to fulfill his wife's greatest dream. He bought a small refrigerator, which, when it was delivered, could have been filled with diamonds, and his wife would not have been any more pleased. Life was improving, and it looked like they might even be able to send one or two of their children to school so that they could learn to read and write and maybe have a better life than Mom and Dad were able to give them.
Little Esmerelda was not a pretty child. In fact, she constantly was the brunt of jokes by her sister and the kids that lived in her neighborhood. She was, as you might expect, the recipient of second- and third-time hand-me-down clothing as buying new clothing was unthinkable on the little money that was available to her family. She was also second to the last to be born, and she simply did not seem to grow as quickly as her brothers and sisters. Her mother constantly worried about her, but there was never enough money to take her to the doctor, much less buy medicines. So she smothered her with motherly love and showered her with prayer.
Esmerelda was a smart child. She wanted so much to learn and to study. She, with the help of her sister Lilliana, learned the basics of reading, and by the time she was eight, she could read nearly all of the cans or packages in the kitchen. Esmeralda wanted to grow up to become a teacher so that she could help others to improve their lives. She wanted to go to school, but there simply was not enough money to send all the children to school, and well, the older ones were picked to go, and she was to wait to see if in time that money might become available to allow her to go to school also.
Then in April, at the age of eleven of that year, she suddenly started growing like a weed. It seemed that in a matter of weeks, she went from a scrawny three foot four to a skinny four foot nine. In another month, she was nearly five feet tall. Everyone was stunned at the incredible changes that she was experiencing. Her hair grew long and silky, her eyes became a luster, full deep brown, her frame grew taller, and she sprang into a woman who blossomed everywhere looking like she was twenty-one. Several of the older boys in the neighborhood began to take notice, and well, her father was beside himself, trying to chase them off. After all, she was not yet twelve but looked every bit of twenty-one. How wonderful for her and yet a bit scary. Almost without being noticed in addition to her rapid gain in height, she also developed a large lump on the left side of her throat. It was imperceptible at first, but after six months, it became larger than a mango. Needless to say, Mom and Dad were very concerned. The scraped a bit of money together and took her to the clinic at the mission on the other side of town to see the doctor. When they returned, they were devastated! Esmerelda had a goiter on her throat. Although they thought it would be benign it was going to cost a great deal of money to have it removed. Money that they did not have. The goiter continued to grow until it pushed against her face, giving her a disfigured smile and filling her life with tears as the taunts from the local kids started all over again. Once again, despite her near-miraculous shapely growth, she was the ugly duckling. Esmerelda, once filled with great hope, was crushed. All she could do was pray and cry! She prayed for healing and hoped beyond the evidence around her that one day she would be normal again.
Three years before this tragic time, the Woodlands Church has started a mission's outreach to Georgetown. This church is one of the mega churches in Houston, Texas, which under the leadership of Pastor Shook, had grown from a mere seven worshipers renting a room at a local elementary school to a sixty-five-acre campus with nearly ten thousand members in just a few short years. This church had decided that they were going to support local missions in South America, and after some detailed vetting, they selected the Tucville Christian Missions Church near the Mocha Arcadia area of the city. They partnered with the local pastor to reach out to the teenaged youth in that area of the city in an effort to help them learn to make better decisions and to stay out of trouble. Part of their mission work was to try to build a reading library so that the mission children could borrow books so that they could learn more about the world and improve their education. Books were, at the time, very expensive, and the local schools almost never had current books from which to teach their lessons. Pastor Shook made it the topic of his sermon one Sunday and asked the members of the church to search their garages, attics, and shelves for any books that might help the teenagers in Mocha Arcadia.
As this was an affluent area of Houston, their response was stunning. Soon, dozens of books were coming into the foyer for donation to the missions and then hundreds and ultimately several thousands. The associate pastor was overwhelmed by the response, especially since many of the books were new with the sales sticker still applied to the cover. It was a wonderful response. One that meant that the church was going to have to rent more shipping containers and could also share the bounty of the books with its other mission projects in India and Kenya where English was also spoken. The donations became so abundant that the following Sunday, Pastor Shook had to ask the congregation to stop bringing in books and to donate money instead for the shipping cost. The last time to donate was set at 6:00 p.m. that following Sunday.
Just before closing the front door, a raggedy old man tottered up to the door, carrying a well-worn math book. It was Algebra One, this was the very book that this elderly man had used many years ago to learn his math in his youth. He had a precious smile on his face as he passed the book to the associate pastor, saying, This is for Esmerelda.
Having done so, he tottered away and disappeared in the tangle of parked cars in the parking lot. The associate pastor barely had time to say thank-you, and he was gone. Perplexed, he placed the book in the bin with all the others and moved back to sorting and packaging the books for shipment. By the end of the month, this enormous job was done. Three large containers were sent to the Port of Houston and were on their way to the missions.
As the containers were sent by ship, it took nearly a month to cover the 3,000 miles between Houston and Georgetown. The arrival of the container at the Missions was, as you might expect, met with great excitement. Finally, after much prayer, they were actually going to achieve their dream of having a well-stocked library, within many cases, with more than one copy of a particular title on file. It was going to be a great deal of work, but it would be worth it. After nearly a week, the job was done, and a great celebration was announced to open the lending library. Nearly everyone in the church was expected to be there, and Esmeralda's family was no different. The prayer meeting was filled with great thankfulness and ecstatic joy that their prayers had been answered. Everyone that could read wanted a book to read. But the pastor held them off until Monday as they needed time to organize a checkout and stocking procedure. But not to disappoint the congregants, he announced that at the back of the church were three very large boxes with duplicate copies of books that were free to anyone who would agree to read them then share them with at least three other church members.
As soon as the closing prayer was offered, there was a slow stampede to the back of the church as no one wanted to seem be too much in a hurry. The associate pastor stood at the door, dipping into the boxes and handing out one book to each family who wanted one. Esmerelda's family had been early to church so as to pray for her medical condition, and when it came time to go home, they were naturally at the back of the line. Esmerelda was bringing up the rear as she was ashamed of how she looked and did not want anyone to taunt her when she got outside. As the building emptied, she sort of shuffled up to the door looking down at the floor. The associate pastor could not help but notice her and how sad she was. He reached out and gave her a gentle hug and reached down into the last box, feeling around for a book. Oh my God, he thought silently; there were not any more books left. He knew intuitively that if anyone needed something to brighten her day, it was Esmerelda, and there were no more books in the box. The pastor stood there for a moment, frozen. Then he thought that he would look again. Much to his surprise, there was one book left. It was a tattered old book that had somehow gotten set up on its edge as it hugged the side of the box. Relieved, he picked up the book and placed it into Esmerelda's hands. She managed a half smile as she started to walk away, and as she did, the pastor said, Keep your faith, prayers are answered!
Esmerelda simply looked down at the book and made her way home without saying a word.
The following morning, it was time for chores and to get the daily activities going. Her mother roused the kids and placed them at the appointed places to make brooms, and everyone was working hard when Esmerelda noticed the tattered old book; it had fallen off the table and onto the floor. She stooped down to pick it up, and as she did, she noticed a book marker in the book. She opened it to where the book marker was and, looking a bit confused, read what the book marker said, Have faith. Your prayers are being answered.
She sort of thought to herself, Yeah, right…not today like so many other days.
As she turned to put the book back on the table, a white envelope fell out and fluttered to the floor. Esmerelda matter of factly stooped over to pick it up, and when she turned it over, it read, Esmerelda.
Shocked, she started to open it with trembling hands. As she did, she saw that there was a crisp 100 US dollar bill inside the envelope. In a breathtaking moment of shock, she sat unceremoniously down it, the chair making enough noise as it scooted back on the floor to get her mother's attention. Looking up, stunned, Esmerelda said, Mother, look at this!
Her mother was just as stunned as she was. But she knew exactly what to do with the money. After quick prayer of thanks, she scooped Esmerelda up and rushed off the missionary clinic as this was the one time a year that there was a volunteer surgeon at the mission who might help her child with the goiter.
Later that day, Esmeralda had her goiter removed, and the doctor told her that in a few weeks, the swelling would go down, to use the antibiotics he gave her, and to keep the wound clean. When she got home, it was unclear what had happened as the bandage from the operation covered much of her face. But over the next few weeks, her gargoyle face transformed into that of a princess. This was for Esmerelda!
Puppy Love!
Joseph and Nina Johnston were typical middle-class folks. They did their best to live a godly life and struggled with all the typical things that regularly affect a middle-class family. Joseph and Nina were married young and soon had a raft of children. Joe was raised in Indiana and worked very hard as a contractor to make a living for his wife and children. The Johnston Construction Group had a reputation for honesty, quality, and on-time construction. For years, they prospered on the edge of wealth as one thing or another would come up with the children or some other domestic emergency would siphon off any extra money that they might happen to secret away.
Then it happened. An often-client, Parodos Papadopoulos, who had many times used Joe's construction company for renovations to his prosperous fish restaurant, decided to build his own building rather than continue to pay exorbitant rent. He managed to buy a nice piece of land less than a quarter of a mile from the original restaurant site, thinking that it would minimize the loss of customers those relocations generally cause and contracted Joe to do the building. All was going well, and as was their custom, change orders were on a handshake and given word basis. Unfortunately, Papadopoulos had not figured on the actual loss of business during construction and had selected a new building site too close to the wide curve of the off ramp from the Hardy Toll Road so that it significantly reduced the auto traffic as by the time a prospective customer saw the restaurant, they had passed it. In order to get into the parking lot, they had to make a hard brake and as very sharp right turn.
Most people simply passed the restaurant by and continued down Highway 6 to the next light where there were half a dozen fast food places. This meant that his business was cut nearly in half overnight. This affected his ability to pay the payment schedule for the construction as he did not take a bank loan and was relying on monies saved over the years and current receipts. Papadopoulos wanted to continue the building even though he knew that he was running out of money fast. Rather than tell Joe what was going on, he simply delayed and then delayed some more the payments for the construction. Joe, being an honorable man, did his best to keep his word despite the ever-deteriorating situation. Joe made several bridging construction loans to finish the construction, using his company assets as surety. Eventually, Papadopoulos had to admit what he had done, and Joe went into bankruptcy as Papadopoulos refused to pay for alterations to the original contract because they were by word of mouth. Joe learned very quickly that without paper backup for the agreements, these agreements were not worth the paper that they were not printed on.
This was, of course, a serious and depressing turn of events, as previously, Mr. Papadopoulos was such a good client. But now, Joseph had been driven into bankruptcy. All his business assets, his personal savings, and even his house would ultimately be taken away to pay the bridging construction loans back to the bank and to be sure that all the subcontractors were paid for the work that they did. It was not that Joe wanted to escape his legitimate debts, quite the contrary: he insisted that all the assets be liquidated in order to maintain his good name and pay the honestly acquired dept. The outfall eventually was that Joseph and his family would leave their beloved Indiana and seek employment elsewhere.
As circumstances would have it, and because Joe was such a stalwart and godly man, he spent many nights in prayer before making his next move. After a few weeks of research and deep prayer, he and his beloved wife decided