"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labour: if either of them falls down, one can help the other up" (Ecclesiastes 4:9 to 10). We like to think of ourselves as independent, but none of us gets through life alone. Someone taught us to read, someone fixed the road we drove on this morning, and someone, somewhere, prayed for us when we did not know it.
These four stories about depending on one another, retold in our own words, show what happens when people act for one another and what happens when they do not. One is about a single act of courage that changed a nation, one about a stranger's kindness to a grieving family, one about a painful failure to stand up for someone, and one about a man who never knew whose life was in his hands. Each ends with a takeaway for preaching or reflection. For a wider look at why community matters, Sopranu's review of Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone is a thoughtful companion.
Stories in this post:
- One Small Voice Can Start a Revolution: Nataliya Dmytruk
- The Twelve Days of Christmas: Gifts on a Grieving Family's Doorstep
- Roger: The Classmate Tony Campolo Wished He Had Defended
- Who Packs Your Parachute? Charlie Plumb and the Sailor He Never Noticed
One Small Voice Can Start a Revolution: Nataliya Dmytruk
In 2004 Viktor Yushchenko ran for the presidency of Ukraine. The ruling party opposed him fiercely. During the campaign he fell seriously ill, and doctors later confirmed he had been poisoned with dioxin. He nearly died, and his face was left badly disfigured. Even that did not stop him from standing for president.
When the decisive vote came, independent observers believed Yushchenko was ahead. But the official count announced a victory for the government's candidate, and the state-run television channel, UT1, reported the result as settled.
In the lower right-hand corner of the screen was a small box. In it a woman named Nataliya Dmytruk was translating the news into sign language for Ukraine's deaf viewers. On 24 November 2004, as the presenter read out the official version, she stopped translating the script. Instead she signed her own message. She told deaf viewers that she was addressing everyone who was deaf in Ukraine, that their president was Viktor Yushchenko, that they should not trust the results announced by the election commission because they were lies, and that she was ashamed to translate them.
The deaf community sprang into action. They sent text messages to their friends about what she had said, and the news spread. Her act of defiance inspired others. Within days, around 250 of her colleagues at the channel held a stop-work meeting, and the station began reporting more honestly.
Over the following weeks, in what became known as the Orange Revolution, hundreds of thousands of people, by some estimates far more, poured into the capital, Kyiv, many of them wearing orange, demanding a fair vote. Ukraine's Supreme Court declared the election invalid and ordered a new one. When the rerun was held on 26 December 2004, Viktor Yushchenko won.
The writer Philip Yancey, reflecting on this story in his book What Good Is God?, saw in that little box of truth in the corner of a big screen a picture of the church. The church does not control the big screen, he observes, and when it tries to, it usually makes a mess of it. The big screen tells us that what matters is beauty, money and power. Then along comes Jesus, like the interpreter in the corner, telling us not to believe it. In Yancey's words, Jesus says in effect, "Don't believe the big screen, they're lying." It is the poor who are blessed, and those who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:3 to 10).
Takeaway: Nataliya Dmytruk was one person in a tiny box on a television screen, yet her courage gave others the courage to speak. Communities depend on people like her, people willing to say what is true when it is costly. Jesus calls his followers the light of the world (Matthew 5:14 to 16), and light does not need to be large to be seen in the dark. Where could your small, honest voice give someone else permission to speak the truth?
Source: Based on Philip Yancey, What Good Is God? (FaithWords, 2010), pages 184 to 186. Dates and details from published accounts of Nataliya Dmytruk and the Orange Revolution.
The Twelve Days of Christmas: Gifts on a Grieving Family's Doorstep
This story is retold from Caryl Harvey's own account. We have not been able to independently confirm the details.
In September 1995 Caryl and Charlie Harvey answered an early morning knock at their front door. Two police officers stood there, their faces grim. They had come to tell the Harveys that their twenty-year-old son, Chad, had been found murdered.
Overwhelmed by grief, the family went through the motions of the funeral and of daily life. But as Christmas came closer, Caryl found herself pouring out her disappointment and anger at God. She felt he had failed her. Why had he not protected her son, when she had prayed for him so often?
In desperation she prayed, "God, if you care about me, I need a miracle. Otherwise, I think I'll probably die." Then she waited. That Christmas, her miracle came.
One night the doorbell rang. Caryl's thirteen-year-old daughter, Sarah, answered it and found a gift on the step, but no giver and nothing to say who had left it. The gift was a tree branch with apples attached to it and a blue plastic bird perched on top. A note was attached, a playful version of the old carol. On the first day of Christmas, it said, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree. But they could not find a partridge, and their pear tree had died, so the family would have to settle for a bluebird in an apple tree.
There was also a Bible verse attached, from the account of the birth of John the Baptist.
The next evening the doorbell rang again. Sarah raced to the door but still was not quick enough to catch the mystery giver. This time there was a box containing chocolate turtles and two Dove chocolate bars, "two turtle doves", along with a Bible verse about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary.
And so it went on for ten more days. On the third day there were three Cornish game hens, because, the note explained, the French hens had lost their passports. On the fourth day came a cassette of songs with the word "bird" in their titles, along with a calling card, for four calling birds. On the fifth day the five golden rings were freshly cooked doughnuts. On the sixth day, six geese a-laying became pastel chalk eggs. On the seventh day, seven swans swam across the top of a cake with blue icing. On the eighth day, eight maids a-milking turned out to be a candle shaped like a cow.
On the ninth day, the nine ladies dancing were eighteen gingerbread people decorated as dancers, because, the note joked, equal opportunity rules would not allow the giver to send only ladies. On the tenth day there were ten wooden leaping puppets. On the eleventh day a James Galway recording stood in for eleven pipers piping. On the twelfth day of Christmas there were twelve drums made from iced biscuits. And every day there was another Scripture verse, gently preparing the family for the coming of Christmas.
Caryl realised that this was her miracle. For the first time since Chad's death, she found herself looking forward to the next day, wanting to know what would arrive. Looking back on that season she said, "My miracle. When I couldn't talk to God, when I didn't even want to talk to him, he sent my miracle through someone else. God used earthly hands to send it to me, but his fingerprints were all over it."
Takeaway: When people are badly wounded, they are often unable to reach out to God themselves. That is when they depend on the rest of us. Our small, practical acts of love can become the way God reaches them. Paul tells us to carry each other's burdens (Galatians 6:2) and to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12:15). Who do you know who is grieving this season, and what simple, creative gift could carry God's fingerprints to their door?
Source: Based on Caryl Harvey's story as she told it in a Christian magazine in late 2001 (cited in the original illustration as Christianity Today, November/December 2001). We have not been able to confirm the exact publication.
Roger: The Classmate Tony Campolo Wished He Had Defended
This story deals with bullying and suicide. If it touches something painful for you, please see the note at the end of this post.
The American sociologist and preacher Tony Campolo, who died in 2024, often told a painful story from his high school years. It was, he said, the story of how he failed to be a Christian.
There was a boy in his class named Roger. Roger was gay, and everyone seemed to know it. The other students tormented him for it. They mocked him, called him names and pushed him around. The abuse was constant, and it was both verbal and physical.
One day it reached its worst point. A group of five boys cornered Roger in the shower room after gym class and humiliated him in a cruel and degrading way, the kind of treatment that strips a person of every last shred of dignity.
That night, at around two o'clock in the morning, Roger went down to the basement of his house and took his own life.
When Tony heard the news, he says, he realised he was not a Christian. He knew all the right answers. He sincerely believed all the right things. He had plenty of good moral habits. But when it came to Roger, he had not lived his faith out at all.
If he had, he said, he would have stood up for Roger when the others were mocking him. He would have been Roger's friend. And just maybe, Roger would still be alive.
Takeaway: Campolo's story is a hard one, and it is meant to be. Faith that never moves from belief into action is, in James's words, dead (James 2:14 to 17). Some people in our schools, workplaces and churches are depending on someone to notice them, to stand beside them and to say "Stop." Jesus said that whatever we do for the least of his brothers and sisters, we do for him (Matthew 25:40). Who is being pushed to the edge around you, and what would it look like to be their friend this week?
Source: Reported in Tony Campolo, Let Me Tell You a Story (Word, 2000). See also a published discussion of the story.
Who Packs Your Parachute? Charlie Plumb and the Sailor He Never Noticed
Charlie Plumb, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, flew jet fighters in the Vietnam War from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. He completed about 75 combat missions (74, according to one Army account). Then, with only days left of his tour, his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted down into enemy territory.
He was captured and spent 2,103 days, nearly six years, as a prisoner of war, much of it in the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton. He survived the ordeal, and after coming home he became a speaker, talking about the lessons he learned from that experience.
One day, years later, Plumb and his wife were eating in a restaurant when a man at another table came over. "You're Plumb!" he said. "You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"
"How in the world did you know that?" Plumb asked.
"I packed your parachute," the man replied.
Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man shook his hand and said, "I guess it worked!"
"It sure did," Plumb told him. "If your chute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."
Plumb could not sleep that night. He kept thinking about the man. He wondered what he had looked like in his Navy uniform, with the white sailor's hat, the bib at the back and the bell-bottom trousers. He wondered how many times he might have passed him on the Kitty Hawk, and how many times he might have seen him and not even said "Good morning, how are you?", because, as he put it, he was a fighter pilot and the other man was just a sailor.
He thought about the many hours that sailor had spent at a long wooden table deep inside the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silk of each parachute, holding in his hands each time the life of someone he did not know.
Now, when Plumb speaks, he asks his audience a question: "Who's packing your parachute?" Everyone, he says, has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day.
This story speaks to several themes. It is about pride: our sense of importance can blind us to the people who pack the parachutes in our lives. It is about gratitude: we should take time to notice and thank those people. And it is about community: every group needs every person playing their part. Some roles are glamorous, like flying a fighter jet. Others are hidden away below decks and look unimportant, like packing parachutes. But all of them are vital.
Takeaway: Paul describes the church as a body in which the parts that seem weaker are indispensable, and the parts we think less honourable deserve special honour (1 Corinthians 12:21 to 26). We depend on far more people than we notice. Who has been quietly packing your parachute, and when did you last thank them?
Source: Story told by Captain Charlie Plumb in his talks on "packing parachutes". Service details from the U.S. Army (2021).
Final thoughts
A sign language interpreter who would not translate a lie, a stranger who left twelve gifts on a grieving family's doorstep, a classmate whose friendship never came, and a sailor whose careful work saved a pilot he never met. These stories about depending on one another all point to the same truth: our lives are bound up together, for better and for worse.
None of us is a fighter pilot all the time. Sometimes we are the one being carried, and sometimes we are the one packing the parachute. Whose life is in your hands right now, and who are you depending on without saying thank you?
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, please reach out to someone you trust today. You can find a crisis line in your country through Find A Helpline.
More stories you may like:
- Stories About the Body of Christ
- Stories About Church and Community
- Best Stories About Kindness and Compassion
These stories are retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. Sources are credited under each story.
Comments
Post a Comment