What an amazing child I have. This was in our church newsletter.
Tom’s Turn—Will You Be Where God Needs You?
Just before worship last Sunday morning we got some very special news. I said something about it just beforemy sermon and promised to find out more.We have a hero among us!Yes, I know. We have lots of heroic people right in our midst, people who do so much more than they could ever be equired to do, who pour themselves out for other people. But this time I’m referring to a hero in the sense we more commonly use it – a person who, by his (or, in this case,her) courage and clear thinking and gallantry, saves another.Twelve-year-old Chase Hardee, who we have watched grow uphere at FW1st, was in Dallas last Saturday night. She and some of her friends were attending a convention designed for young girls. They were excited because it was an opportunity to stay in a big hotel and do all sortsof other fun things. Her mom says she didn’t have herpermission to be up running around as late as she was, but then, you know what happens when we get that first chance to be away from our parents.Apparently quite late, Chase and a friend were on the elevatorand were holding the door open for someone they thought was soon to return.(I believe she told me this happened on about the eleventh floor.) Standing there holding the elevator for this person who, as it turned out never returned,they heard loud voices. Without ever intending to be part of what was going on, they saw a young man and a young woman arguing. The young man left the young woman in anger and, before Chase and her friend knew it,the young woman climbed up on a ledge above the hotel’slobby and atrium over one hundred feet below. The youngwoman’s grief over her relationship with her boyfriend prompted her to try to kill herself.And here were these two little girls, watching.Now I don’t know about you, but I think that when I was twelve, if something like that had happened to me, I would have been pretty freaked out. I’d like to think that maybe something I’d learned in church or in Boy Scouts would have prepared me. But I’m pretty sure I would have been rather freaked out. Maybe Chase was too, last Saturday night. But if shewas, she didn’t let it get in her way. She responded.She responded! A twelve-year-old girl in a dangerous situation(actually two twelve-year-olds) approached a twenty-year-old woman and sought to help. They were not trained counselors or psychologists. They simpley saw a very real and immediate need and realized that someone needed to help. So they stepped up and did it. I’ve got to sit down withChase sometime soon and ask what was said and how they accomplished the task. But the long and short of it was that they talked that poor distraught woman off that ledge. They kept her from a horrific mistake. They saved her life.Now I could say that God worked it all out, planning for Chaseand her friend to be breaking the rules and staying up too late, planning for them to be right there at just that moment. That may or may not be the case. Who knows the mind of God? But I do know this: God, workingthrough the continuing revelation in Jesus in the church and in good parents and through helpful teachers at school, prepared the heart of Chase Hardee—prepared her to be able and willing to notice the distress of another person, and preparedher to have the courage to step forward and do what was necessary.For that we can give thanks. And we can say,“Chase, we’re proud of you!!”I’ll see you and your guests next Sunday.
To prepare, please read John 3.1-17.Peace,Tom
