I just met a man who committed an amazing crime… he stole
God. Well, to be accurate, he stole A god. Great story!
Leonard has an amazing story. He is a determined and
resilient man. Coming from a dirt poor farm in rural Kansas, Leonard learned he
could achieve what he could believe. He fought his way onto a local ball team
to earn his dad’s admiration. In the 1930s he became a cheerleader at Wyandotte
(KS) High School and kept on working until he became head cheerleader. Leonard’s
entire life story is one of focus and discipline.
Never did Leonard’s determination serve him so well as when,
in 1981, he found himself at the bottom of the collapsed Hyatt Regency walkway.
Three of his family were killed. Leonard was lucky… you could say… he only
suffered fractures in all four limbs. He was in the hospital 77 days and was
the fourth from the last of the survivors to be discharged from the hospital.
He fought through hours and days and weeks of tortuous physical therapy to
regain the use of his badly damaged body.
Leonard appears to always succeed in whatever he sets him
mind on. And in
Leonard couldn’t get his mind off this object of fascination. Like so many other goals in his life, Leonard was focused, disciplined,
and determined. He hasn’t told me the details of his caper, but... there’s an
empty table somewhere in China where a ceramic icon once sat.
As I often like to say here at Follow Illustrated, let’s get
a word from our Sponsor:
For the customs of the peoples are delusion;
Because it is wood cut from the
forest,
The work of the hands of a
craftsman with a cutting tool.
They decorate it with silver and
with gold;
They fasten it with nails and with
hammers
So that it will not totter.
Like a scarecrow in a cucumber
field are they,
And they cannot speak;
They must be carried,
Because they cannot walk!
Do not fear them,
For they can do no harm,
Nor can they do any good.
(Jeremiah 10:4-5)
Don’t you love that imagery? “Like a scarecrow in a cucumber
field are they, and they cannot speak; they must be carried, because they
cannot walk!” And carried away that god was!! By Leonard! I can’t imagine how
disillusioned the Chinese family must have been when they discovered that their
god had been kidnapped, powerless to defend himself, let alone the family who
worshiped him.
I’m reminded of what Paul said to the philosophers of
Athens:
The God who made the world and all
things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples
made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything,
since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things
(Acts 17:24-25)
We serve a God who, as Creator, asks nothing from His
creation, but respect and praise. He sits above the heavens, not on a wood
table in the living room. I do not mean to mock the Chinese or any other
religion, but I take strength from believing that my God can’t be swiped by an
American soldier and shipped back to the States in a well-padded wood box.
Leonard stresses to me, “I swear as a matter of honor, that
I never have stolen any other thing in my life.”
I shoot back at Leonard, “You
stole a god, Leonard! What else could you steal!!”
A closing thought. I take solace in the fact that God forgives. He even forgives
those who steal gods! I guess technically, Leonard didn’t exactly repent of his
sin and return the icon to its owners. He made a lamp out of it that he reads
the sports pages by. How about I leave this one in THE God’s hands?
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