1 Kings 17: 8-16

In 1984, a man named Duncan Edmonds was serving as the chief policy advisor to the Canadian Government’s Minister of Defence. Shortly after beginning that job, he accompanied his boss on an official mission to West Germany.
While in Europe, he became concerned that his boss chose to visit a West German strip club while carrying secret NATO documents. Edmonds saw that as being a significant security risk and so he reported the incident to Canada’s Prime Minster... As a result, that Minister of Defence was fired from his job due to his lapse of judgment. But that wasn’t all. Edmonds was rewarded for his concern by also being fired by the Prime Minister, who wasn’t pleased that Edmonds had made his administration look bad in the public eye. The Prime Minister didn’t stop there, he blackballed Edmonds from getting any government job to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Life is not always easy for a whistleblower.

One of the saddest stories in the history of the state of New York is that of the Wendel family. John G Wendel I, was a very successful furrier who married a woman in the Astor family in the early 1800’s. By the year 1900, the family fortune was estimated to be $50 million. That’s roughly equivalent to $1.3 billion dollars today. In spite of that vast wealth, John G Wendel II managed to prevent five of his six sisters from marrying, presumably because he wanted to keep the family fortune intact. Here they were, blessed with vast wealth that could have greatly enriched their own lives as well as the lives of many, many others. However, they chose to spend almost none of their fortune. They lived in the same house in Manhattan for more than 50 years — a house that had been built in 1854. Bathrooms were added, but that was the only concession to modern amenities. They had no electricity and no telephone. When the last sister died in 1931, her estate was valued at more than $100 million. That’s roughly $1.57 billion in modern terms. Yet her only dress was one she had made for herself and then proceeded to wear for the next 25 years. The truth is that the Wendel family had such a powerful compulsion to hold on to their possessions that they chose to live like paupers...

("I remember a cartoon I saw once, showing a character bemoaning the problems of the world – poverty, war, disease, pollution and on and on – and asking rhetorically, 'But what can one person do?' The next frame showed a chorus of voices from a million points around the globe all asking the same question: 'What can one person do?'...")

("Many years ago, I read a suggestion in Word and Witness to use the Graham Greene short story, The Second Death, as the sermon for the text from the gospel. The writer of this suggestion said that one approach would be to read the short story aloud. The preacher could then pause at the conclusion of the story, close the book, and then say, 'Friends, Jesus came to give new life...")

("Listen to these words from a letter to a confidant. The author is experiencing a spiritual drought. She writes, For me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that 'I look and do not see, listen and do not hear the tongue moves in prayer but does not speak. These are the words of Mother Teresa published in the book entitled Come Be My Light...")

("I belong to a preaching discussion list on the internet, a virtual gathering of preachers from all over the world who talk about the readings set for the week. This week an American preacher wrote that a 16 year old boy had been killed in a road accident. Could she really preach on these two stories about dead sons restored to their mothers, when this community mourned a dead son of its own?...")

("Both of my parents died last August. It fell to my husband, my brother and me to clear out their cottage. I came across a large photo of my father, who was a pastor for 60 years of his life. It was a candid shot, taken first thing in the morning on a parish retreat. He is sitting up in bed in his pajamas, against his pillows and half-covered by blankets...")