Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul by Jack Canfield

Author:Jack Canfield [Canfield, Jack; Hansen, Mark Victor; Aubery, Patty; Mitchell-Autio, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicken Soup for the Soul
Published: 2012-08-29T17:36:00+00:00

A Beacon of Light

The nonbeliever says: “Show me God and I will believe in Him.” The believer answers: “Believe in God and He will show himself to you.”

Michal Paul Richard

In Tulsa, everyone who has ever driven downtown at night has experienced the breathtakingly brilliant light glowing from the fifteen-story church tower of Boston Avenue Methodist. The warm beacon of light burns brightly every night. But that was not always the case.

Up until 1950, the tower was lit for only two weeks a year—during the Christmas season—because the cost was so steep. One bitterly cold, windy night of that year close to Christmas, the church’s minister, Dr. Paul Galloway, decided to catch up on some paperwork. So, after dinner, he returned to the church. As he walked up to the heavy sanctuary doors, he glanced up at the beautiful building whose art deco style had made the church a landmark since it opened in 1929.

As he unlocked the doors, he looked up at the tower’s light glowing in the sky and, as always, felt warmed within.

The minister walked through to his office and began to work. He was soon so lost in thought that he did not hear the sanctuary door open or the footsteps coming through the carpeted church. He was startled when his office door opened, and he looked up to see a young woman in an elegant fur coat close the door behind her and swiftly turned to face him. Framed by wind-blown bleached hair, a bleak despondent face he’d never seen before turned defiant eyes on him. “Are you the pastor of this church?” she demanded, slumping against the door.

“Yes,” he answered.

Suddenly she straightened and blurted out belligerently, “What do you have to say to someone who’s going to commit suicide?”

Thus a dialogue started which revealed that the woman had come to town to see her brother, a professor at Tulsa University, for the last time. Then she’d rented a room at a downtown hotel where she planned to end her life. But, as she’d started to close the green drapes of her hotel window facing Boston Avenue, a great shining light had caught her attention. She’d stood staring at the beacon of light in the sky. It called to her somehow, as if offering a hope she’d so longed for these last three years.

She’d thrown on her coat and rushed downstairs to the hotel desk. There she’d inquired of a clerk, “Where is that big light in the sky coming from?”

“Boston Avenue Methodist Church,” he’d answered.

“How do I get there?”

“Go out the front door, turn right, go to the traffic light and turn left,” the clerk said. “That church is only a few blocks away.”

Now, sitting in the office of Paul Galloway, she found the heavyset, graying minister to be a warm, friendly man who did not try to dissuade her from her determined task. Instead, he listened carefully with only gentle comments to her reasons for committing suicide (none of which is known to anyone to this very day except those two).

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