Of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven

   “Hey you – you in the gray suit!”

   I continued walking. I knew they must be calling me but I always disliked it when people shouted.

   “Excuse me, sir, but could you help me out a minute?”

   That was better, I thought, far more polite altogether.

   Being in an expansive mood after a particularly good day, I inquired how I might help the stranger who confronted me.

   “We’re auditioning for a live reality show and the singers are appalling, absolutely appalling. I just don’t know what the screeners have been doing putting the candidates forward. I said I could do a better job myself with the first person I met on the street. “No, you couldn’t”, they said. “Yes, I could”, I remonstrated. It became a real shouting match. “So here I am. Will you help me out?”

   Now it just so happens I really enjoy singing, although nowadays it is only for my own pleasure, especially when making a joyful noise unto the Lord. I had taken a few community education classes a few years ago, stopping only when a change of job took me too far away to continue. Then I had joined the choir at the church I attended but after a while I no longer felt comfortable there so I left. Suddenly, however, I had the totally unexpected opportunity to sing in public and the idea appealed to me immensely. It would be a far cry from the solos my classmates and I had sung to our families at our end of class concerts.

   “Sing whatever you like,” continued my host, “just do your very best for me so that I’m proved right and my fellow judges are forced to eat humble pie.” I can remember thinking even then that that was hardly the most Christian of attitudes to adopt.

   We were by now in the television studio before a live audience and I felt like the monarch of all I surveyed.

   Not long before I had heard a popular song for which I changed some of the words to glorify our Father in heaven. What a priceless opportunity to share my faith in song before who knew how large an audience across the airways and on the small screen.

   Well, you will have heard of beginner’s luck and perhaps recall that latent is talent with a slightly different spelling. Without waiting a moment longer, I launched myself into song and according to the media next day, a star was born. I couldn’t believe it, but my host must have done because he offered me a recording contract right there and then on that live television show. I thanked him profusely, said I’d think about it and let him know.

   “What is there to think about, Zachary?” he stammered.

   I told him that, while I enjoyed singing, my real passion was writing ultra short, fictional but biblically based stories in homage to my God and King.

   My host was taken aback, so I promptly filled the void by explaining I was on a mission to spread the Good – the wonderful – News about the Lord Jesus Christ. In my view, the world was badly in need of a savior and only He could fill that role, as He had already done for centuries for those who believed on His name. I needed to be sure through earnest prayer that a recording contract would be in furtherance of God’s will for my life and not a distraction from what I liked to call my writing ministry.

   It was as if what I said that evening touched a chord in the hearts and minds of countless numbers of people. Calls to the TV station and messages on their web site that night and long, long afterwards spoke of a hunger for a public return of God in their lives after years in which we had turned our backs on Him. Where we had been told for years we couldn’t bring prayer books to school – though we could bring guns - now we wanted His protection. Where we had been told that Christmas could not be celebrated, now we wanted His blessing. And so the calls continued.

   I was privileged to receive many offers to publish and film my stories, including one from a graduate Christian University. They told me they knew they couldn’t match the offers I had received from the secular world but they hoped I would find it within me to honor their mission which was beyond price. The figure they mentioned was still higher than I thought it would be, even allowing for the ten per cent they naturally expected I would return to the Lord in some way.

   It was the certainty they would honor my own mission above any other institution that had approached me that told me immediately theirs was the offer I would accept. Only I would give back to the Lord, not ten per cent, but ninety per cent. I did not seek to profit from doing the will of God. That money could be used, according to the university’s most recent newsletter, to build an international conference center right here on campus from which the Good – the wonderful – News about the Lord Jesus Christ could be proclaimed to all nations.

   And the remaining ten per cent? As I looked out the window at the setting sun, I was reminded of the little beggar boy’s response when asked by Enrico Caruso what he would have left if the great tenor did not give him the penny for which he had asked. “I would still have the sun”, came the cheerful reply.

   I would use the remaining ten per cent to establish an academy for the purpose of training people to become singing teachers, that they might impart their talents to impoverished children and young people the world over. Penniless they might be, but with the warmth of the sun at their backs, and the joy of singing in their hearts, they would grow steadily in the knowledge that of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

For further reading: Psalms 100:1, 98:4; Philippians 1:6, 4:6; Psalms 73:24; John 14:13; Proverbs 16:9, 16:3; Psalms 32:8; Philippians 1:6; Matthew 25:40; Psalms 41:1; Matthew 19:14