Science remembers Charles
Kettering as the genius of electrical engineering. I remember Kettering as the
electrical wizard who pio-neered in creative possibilities. I now have much of
my future behind me with only a short future before me and I am tantalized by Kettering’s declaration
announcing: “I am not interested in the past; I am interested only in the
future.”
Speaking to his Ohio
audience, Kettering delivered what could certainly be one of the shortest speeches
on record, which he concluded with this statement: “The future is where I expect to spend the rest of my life.”
Having firmly planted
that seed in the heart of his audience, he sat down to a thunderous applause
from his audience. His speech resonates with creativity. His vision challenges
us. His focus on a positive attitude personally speaks to me for this time of
my life. It calls me to spend my remaining small pocket of change as
expeditiously as I know how.
It reminds me that in spite of the majority of
years I have behind me, I want to spend what future I have left as profitable and
expeditious as I possibly can. Kettering’s
words offer me the kind of hope we all have available when we stop and take
note of where God is at work.
Consider Nathan and Ann
Smith, dear friends who gave their lives as full-time career missionaries, only
to discover when well along in life that they faced a giant of Goliath
proportions. I met Nathan while still in my teens, when I was barely away from my
northern home and beginning a secondary education at Anderson College. Nathan was
an older student from deep-south Louisiana, married to the daughter of Danish missionaries.
He lost that young wife much
too soon in a tragic auto accident but survived his loss and later married Ann
Espey, a younger sister to my friend Joe who was a fellow student friend with
whom I enjoyed a long fun-filled friendship across the years.
I knew Nathan and Ann best
for their long years of post-World War Two Missionary service in Japan and
Korea. After spending a lifetime there they still faced their own personal
Goliath. Confronted with the discovery that Nathan suffered Multiple Myeloma. They
faced an adversity that takes few prisoners and leaves many victims. Nathan had
very little hope for today and no promise of tomorrow. His doctors gave him six
months to live, not more than four years, a road I know something about
traveling on.
Several vertebrae
collapsed in Nathan’s upper back as a result of his illness. Yet, he battled as
vigorously as a man of his character and stamina could battle, in spite of
enduring two long years of chemotherapy. Sometimes he was unable to walk for
weeks at a time. He lost more than half his blood supply and, he faced eventual
hepatitis that caused cirrhosis of the liver.
Shingles attacked Nathan’s
right side. A few months later they struck his left side. They further weakened
his immune system and created additional medical issues. His monthly
chemotherapy eventually began proving effective and he began slowly mending, even
regaining some strength. The cancer in his bloodstream diminished and finally,
the doctors initiated oral chemotherapy that allowed discontinuing his monthly
hospital visits.
Nathan could now follow a
daily regimen of activities relatively pain free, but he stood four to five
inches shorter than the sturdily-framed man I knew back in college, Nathan
joined Ann and began traveling about the country as they together shared their
common faith together and it would be sixteen more years before the Lord would
receive Nathan home.
Sustained by prayer, bible
reading, and fellowship, and enriched by friends and family, Nathan accompanied
Ann and went whenever and wherever the church called them. By the time they
visited us in southwest Michigan, I was in my final years of pastoring. It was
on that occasion Nathan shared the five ideas that enabled him to maintain his
faith-focus while he and Ann sought daily for the fortitude and renewal
necessary to complete his journey of faith:
1. Find others
to cheer.
2. Keep a
positive attitude.
3. Eat and
exercise properly.
4. Keep goals
ahead.
5. Learn to
relax and laugh more.
Wonderfully sustained, Nathan
and Ann created a new and improved future for themselves, all the while living
in God’s time and by His grace.
God utilizes that same
creativity in our lives. As he blessed Nathan and Ann, he purposefully shares
with us. “I know the plans I have for you,” declared the Lord to Jeremiah (29:11).
All that God asks is that we patiently pick up the pieces of our hard-to-learn
lessons and diligently reconstruct the circumstances of our lives and He will
fill in the empty spaces and fulfill the plan He has for us.
From
walkingwithwarnerblogspot.com … what puzzle pieces is God waiting to help you find_____?
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