A story of how one individual helped many people, and how we can too. (3/24/63)
For March 24, 1963
Let us pray: O Lord of all men, cause the pure light of thy divine knowledge to shine forth in our hearts, and open the eyes of our understanding, that we may comprehend the precepts of thy gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I was fascinated by the account of Dolly Melville in the March 1st issue of Presbyterian Life. I am sure that many of you saw it and read it.
Dolly is the wife of an engineer, Earl Melville. They have three daughters. They live in a rural community fifteen miles outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is an organist in the local Presbyterian Church. In these respects she seems like an ordinary American housewife and mother. But in the article we find that what she has done with her ordinary life is extraordinary. For she has responded to the needs of homeless, friendless children and adults – she has responded by doing whatever seemed necessary to help them: whether it involved taking them into her home temporarily or permanently, or finding them jobs, or visiting them at a reformatory, or tracing down a place for them to live. “The number of persons she has befriended and be-mothered,” we read in the Presbyterian Life article, “now stands at the staggering total of seventy.”
Dolly’s strong drive to respond to the needs of others began more than twelve years ago with the drowning of her seven-year-old son. Shattered with grief, she decided to let her son live on through her actions of mercy toward other children. So she began accepting foster children into her home. In all she opened her home to thirteen such children, at least two of whom were seriously disturbed teenage boys who had scrapes with the law.
Dolly opened her heart and her home not only to American children, but also to refugees from other countries. She and her husband have adopted a Hungarian boy who took part in the 1956 Hungarian revolution and a small Korean orphan. And Dolly and her husband have also been instrumental in sponsoring whole families of refugees. In 1956 they themselves sponsored the Toths, a family of four from Hungary. Mr. Toth was a plumber, but could speak no English. Dolly found him a job. Four years later she and her husband mortgaged their own home in order to buy a home for another Hungarian refugee family. And they have been prime movers behind the sponsoring of other families – by their own church and by other churches in the area. Through their efforts three Dutch Indonesian families have been thus sponsored. In the past few months they have sponsored four Cuban brothers and sisters and their widowed mother. Dolly has taken a temporary job in the school office in order to pay the rent for this Cuban family, the Hernandez.
You who read this article I am sure were inspired by this woman’s magnificent spirit. Here is a woman who undoubtedly has found a depth and richness to life that many of us long for. Here is a woman who obviously has deep ties with other persons, ties which all of us would cherish. But, we ask, what is the source of this depth and richness? What is the source of these deep ties to others? The answer to these questions lies in Dolly Melville’s willingness to respond to the needs of these other persons. Out of her own suffering has come a sensitivity to the suffering of other persons. The suffering of these others acts as a claim upon her, as a call to her. She not only recognizes this claim and hears this call, but she responds – quickly and fully and with an open heart. And when she responds to this claim and this call then she deepens the ties between herself and the other persons. The ties are deepened not only through the sympathy and understanding that flow from her to the other person – but they are deepened also by the concrete acts of kindness and concern that issue forth from this sympathy and understanding.
In this Wisconsin housewife, then, we have an important clue to how we can deepen our ties to others. In Dolly Melville we see that to deepen our human ties means being responsive to the needs of others, seeing in these needs a claim made upon us, seeing in this claim a call to us – a call for us to respond: with sympathy, with concern and often with concrete action. We deepen our time by being responsible human beings. And by “responsible” we mean “able to respond” “able to answer a call” – the call of agony and need of some other human being.
Let us take a little closer look at Dolly Melville in order to get a bit clearer view of how she went about deepening her ties to others, in order to get a sharper picture of the factors involved in her ability to respond, her ability to answer the call of those in need.
First of all, we note that the impetus for this increased sense of responsibility for her fellow human beings (of answerability to the needs of other persons) – we note that the impetus came out of her own suffering. She lost her own son Bobby and this tore her apart, this shattered her existence. But an aunt from the west coast wrote a letter to her about this tragic loss and about how Bobby’s life need not really be over. “Your son’s life will continue to be felt,” Dolly’s aunt wrote, “But it will have to be through you.” These words sank into Dolly’s consciousness and began to cut into grief, and she “began to turn over ways of making Bobby’s life count for something – through her.”
A second factor in Dolly Melville’s ability to deepen her ties through making a response to the needs of others was that she was willing to respond quickly and directly without first stopping to ask how. She heard of a lonely child or a refugee family needing a home and employment, and she immediately responded to the need that she saw without at the time knowing exactly how things would work out. In other words, she responded with a trust that things would work out. She had a clear sense of God’s working in the world, of his ability to work miracles, of his willingness to answer prayer, of his providential timing so that things do work out. And she leaned heavily upon this trust in the providence of God. This trust allowed her to make commitments and start to act even before she had any idea how the commitments would be met or the action would turn out.
This ability of Dolly’s to respond immediately and directly is well illustrated in an anecdote mentioned in the Presbyterian Life article.
Recently a couple of nearby churches called her in for advice on how to go about bringing in a refugee family. She contained her impatience through several minutes of wary talk about ways and means. Finally, she broke in: “Can’t we skip all that? Let’s get the people here.”
“Have you a plan?” someone asked. She shook her head. “But something will work out.” As it turned out, something did – a four-way sponsorship for an eleven-member Dutch Indonesian family.
A third factor of Dolly’s capacity to respond to the needs of others was her belief that she could not do it all alone and her willingness to seek the assistance of other persons. She did not hesitate to call on friends and neighbors and fellow townspeople to help her. The result of this was that she deepened the ties not only between her and the people she was helping, but also between herself and her friends and neighbors and between these friends and neighbors and the children and refugees that they all now were involved in assisting. And as these friends and neighbors became involved, then they became more sensitive to the needs of those they were assisting, and they began to respond on their own to similar persons in need. It was through Dolly’s inspirations that first her own church and then surrounding churches began to sponsor refugees from Hungary, Cuba, and Dutch Indonesia.
A fourth factor in Dolly’s ability to deepen her ties to other persons by responding to their need was her dogged persistence and her unwillingness to give up in the face of discouragement and different obstacles. Her willingness to persevere where others might have called it quits accounted for a number of situations which turned out well whereas otherwise they undoubtedly would have turned out as failures. When the father of one of the Hungarian refugee families lost the job that Dolly had helped him secure, it looked for a time as if he would be unable to obtain another job. But after some weeks of his searching and her doing her best to track down leads, one of her friends pitched in by running a newspaper ad. This produced the desired result, and this refugee family was thereby helped to become self-sufficient and take its place in the community. Had Mrs. Melville failed to give him her constant encouragement and to give herself unstintingly to overcoming the difficulty, these persons lives might have turned out much differently.
I have already pointed out how Dolly Melville’s trust in God’s providence – in his undergirding care and concern – was a deep resource in her ventures at answering the call of the need of her fellow human beings. But her religion offered her another resource also. It offered her the example of Jesus for her to follow. For when he was on earth Jesus offered us a perfect example of answering the call of human need. He offered us a perfect example of one who recognized the claim of others upon him, and responded to that claim with sympathy and sensitivity and understanding. Jesus labored tirelessly in his efforts of ministering to those in distress. When children came to him, he dropped everything to help them. When blind men approached him he gave them back their sight. When deaf mutes came to him, he gave them back their hearing and their speech. When a Syrophoenician woman asked him to cure her daughter, he answered her request. When Peter’s mother was ill, he cured her fever. When mentally deranged men approached him, he gave them back their sanity. Even when he was tired and would have liked to get off by himself, still he had compassion upon the people who came to him. Through his great sensitivity and keen perception Jesus always saw the call of human need, and he never failed to answer this call. Persons who were sick or lonely or despised or in physical want were always laying claim to his time and his energy and his great powers of healing and revitalization, Jesus never turned his back on these claims made upon him. He always responded. And in his response he made the ties he had with other persons ever deeper and ever richer.
To deepen our own ties with others by responding to the claims made upon us is by no means easy. If a child makes a claim upon our time and our affection and our attention, it may mean our giving up something in order to do this. If a spouse makes a claim upon us to share a problem, this may mean giving energy that we feel we just don’t have right now. If a friend makes a claim upon us to dispel some of his despair and loneliness, this may mean taking a good deal of trouble on our part. If a neighbor with a family problem comes to us to talk, this may mean that we will become more involved than is comfortable. If a group of teenagers make a claim upon our time and interest and experience by asking us to coach a ball team or to act as a sponsor to a club, this may involve making some adjustments in our lives that we had not planned. If those who are ill make a claim upon our pocketbooks to support the Heart Fund or the Cancer Fund or the Muscular Dystrophy Fund, then to respond may mean making a sacrifice. If those who are in general or mental hospitals make a claim upon us to go as a volunteer worker on a regular basis, our response may mean taking time we feel we can ill afford and exposing ourselves to human suffering that we would rather protect ourselves from. If refugees from Cuba or Korea or Hong Kong make a claim upon us to help them get relocated in our own community, then to respond may involve us in expenditures of time and energy and frustration and money that we could well avoid.
There are other difficulties that we face if we really take seriously our responsibility toward other people, if we really attempt to answer the call of those who need us, if we really try to respond to the claims made upon us in a decent human way. And Dolly Melville must have faced some of these difficulties. One such hazard of responding freely and openly is that we are driven to see that no matter how hard we try, we still will often fail. One refugee family that Dolly tried to help responded with callous ingratitude. And worse still, some of our failures we shall be driven to see as resulting from our own imperfection and from our own hardheartedness and our own sin. And so often we shall be driven to seek God’s forgiveness, something that many times is hard to do. And then if we once begin to respond to human need and suffering, we must come to the realization that there is really no end to it. If we become more sensitive, then those who see that we understand will open up to us more readily, and we shall have an even greater claim laid upon us. And we find too that often we are pushed to the limit of our endurance. At times becoming deeply involved with people makes demands upon our physical being that are hard to stand. We become exhausted. We become disappointed and fall into despair.
Yes, to respond to the claims of our fellow human beings is difficult. But then who ever said that living the Christian life is easy? If in answering the call of human need we find that we are imperfect, that we fall short, that we need forgiveness. This is nothing to become upset about. If we are driven to see that we need forgiveness, then we are driven to see ourselves in truth, to see ourselves as we really are. And we are thus driven that much closer to understanding the true meaning of God’s forgiving love. If we are driven to see that there is far more suffering in the world than we ever dreamed of, then we are being driven to face reality, and we are perhaps for the first time seeing that our real purpose in life is to minister to those who suffer so. If we are driven beyond the limits of our endurance, of our patience, of our own human strength, then we have the possibility of finding out that there are resources available beyond us that we never knew existed. And along with Dolly Melville we may find new meaning in the Bible passage: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…They shall run, and not worry: And they shall walk, and not faint.”
As individuals and as a church we are being called by human need. As individuals and as a church we are being presented with claims by other persons. How are we responding? As individuals are we ready to respond as Dolly Melville has been responding? With immediateness, with directness, with sensitivity, with an element of risk but with a deeper element of faith? And what about us as a church? How are we responding to the claims made upon us? In our church boards are we attempting to respond to issues in ways that have vital impacts on human needs, or are we too bogged down in inconsequential? As parents of baptized children and as a congregation who is the official sponsor of these children are we carrying out our vows of providing our children with what they need most of all in life: sound instruction in the Bible, in their knowledge of God and of Christian doctrine about God and a solid experience of living in a loving forgiving Christian community (namely the church and the family)? As a congregation are we providing adequately for the needs of our teenagers – such needs as guidance in how to meet problems of a changing world, instruction in the vital areas of dating and marriage and the family, understanding during the stormy years of adolescence? In our men’s and women’s organizations are we gearing our programs to sensitizing our men and women to the trying needs of the world, or is our goal merely to provide relaxation and entertainment? And how are we as a church responding to the more pressing needs of the broader community and the world? Are we aware enough of the hunger and sickness and misery in the world, and do we indicate this awareness through our benevolence giving? And do we bring this awareness right to our own doorstep by taking the initiative by ministering to foreign students in out areas, by taking the initiative in resettling a refugee family in our town, by taking stands on injustices in our own community such as racial or religious discrimination in the resort business?
Daily we as individuals and we as a church are faced by a call to respond to human need, by a claim that requires positive action in the face of human suffering. We can answer this call and respond to this claim by turning our backs. Or we can answer in such a way that our human ties are deepened and our life as a church is enriched. What is our answer as individuals? What is our response as a church?
Let us pray: We thank thee for the many opportunities to enrich our lives through deepening our ties to others. Give us the strength and the courage, O God our Father, to make a response worthy of our name as Christians. Amen.
Sermon copyright © 1963 by Marjorie D. Palmer and
the direct descendants of William E. Palmer
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