Abide With Me - Hymn
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Matthew Parris: As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
By TIMES ONLINE
Thursday, 08 January 2009 at 12:00 AM
Reposted from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.
At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.
We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.
Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately†because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.
It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.
There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs†and therefore best for “themâ€; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man†and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,†he said.
To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
Thursday, 08 January 2009 at 12:00 AM
Reposted from:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.
At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.
We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.
Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately†because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.
It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.
There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs†and therefore best for “themâ€; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man†and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,†he said.
To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
O lampião
http://anchor.tfionline.com/pt/post/o-lampiao/
D. Brandt Berg
Descanse somente em Deus, ó minha alma; dele vem a minha esperança. —Salmo 62:5[1]
Um erro comum entre obreiros cristãos é trabalhar demais, além da sua capacidade. Precisam se poupar um pouco para o Senhor; descansar, quando estiverem cansados. Quando estiverem exaustos, devem se retirar da luta e entregar a batalha a outros. Precisam saber quando lutar e quando sossegar, quando colocar na mão de outros e quando orar. Quando salvam os outros, com certeza não conseguem salvar a si mesmos. Mas existem ocasiões quando devem salvar a si próprios para poderem salvar muitos outros.
Às vezes, é preciso escolher entre o que é bom e o que é melhor para o Reino. Reservar o melhor de si para o Senhor, dar o melhor para o Noivo, dar a Ele o primeiro lugar. Devemos dar o primeiro lugar a Jesus, à convivência com Ele e ao Seu amor. Devemos aprender a descansar nos Seus braços e não trabalharmos tanto com a nossa própria força. Todos precisamos aprender a separar o melhor que temos para o Senhor.
“No sossego e na confiança estará a sua força.”[2] “Lança os teus cuidados sobre o Senhor e Ele te sustentará!”[3] “Vinde a Mim todos os que estão cansados e sobrecarregados. Tomai sobre vós o meu jugo e aprendei de mim que sou manso e humilde de coração, e encontrareis descanso para vossas almas. Porque o meu jugo é suave e o meu fardo é leve.”[4] Às vezes, tentamos carregar demais e excedemos nossa capacidade. Precisamos deixar mais por conta do Senhor. “Lança o teu fardo sobre o Senhor e Ele te susterá. Confia no Senhor e faz o bem e verdadeiramente serás alimentado e habitarás na terra por longos dias”,[5] pois Ele o sustentará.
“A força vem do Senhor, que a todos dá liberalmente e não o lança em rosto.”[6] “Qual de vocês, se seu filho pedir pão, lhe dará uma pedra? Ou se pedir peixe, lhe dará uma cobra? Se vocês, apesar de serem maus, sabem dar boas coisas aos seus filhos, quanto mais o Pai de vocês, que está nos céus, dará coisas boas aos que lhe pedirem”,[7] e os susterá.
Todos precisamos aprender a depender mais do Senhor, a deixar mais por Sua conta. Não temos condições de fazer tudo. É humanamente e fisicamente impossÃvel! Devemos fazer o que podemos cada dia e deixar o resto por conta do Senhor. Se não conseguimos, Ele tem que fazer. “Ele sabe, Ele ama, Ele cuida. Nada pode obscurecer a Sua verdade. Ele dá o melhor aos que guardam o melhor para Ele”.
Senhor, ajude cada um a aprender a distribuir bem tempo e reservar o melhor para Você, a descansar do trabalho nos Seus braços para receber Sua força, a força que vem do Seu amor e do contato com Você, a qual encontramos quando Lhe damos o melhor de nós.
“E encontrareis descanso para vossas almas.” Poucas pessoas entendem que a alma é a combinação de corpo e espÃrito.[8] Se não descansarmos no EspÃrito vamos ficar cansados no corpo, precisamos aprender a descansar no EspÃrito para pouparmos nossos corpos e termos forças para ministrar a outros. Porque a força vem do Senhor que fez os céus e a terra, e nossos corpos. Ele sabe que nossa maior necessidade é de paz, convÃvio com Ele, e de nos alimentarmos com a Sua Palavra.
Devemos primeiro partilhar dos frutos para então alimentarmos os outros. Não podemos alimentar as pessoas se não nos alimentarmos. Devemos alimentar nossa alma para podermos partir o pão com outros. Não podemos dar tudo e ficar sem nada, caso contrário, vamos ficar sem óleo para quando o Noivo chegar.[9] Precisamos buscar primeiro o Rei e o Seu Reino, então todas as outras coisas nos serão acrescentadas pelo Seu poder, força, Reino, fortaleza, e a seu tempo — se dermos prioridade a Ele.[10]
Não podemos nos desgastar completamente no serviço prestado aos outros, a ponto de não sobrar nada para nós ou para o Rei. Precisamos aprender a reservar o primeiro lugar para Ele e para os momentos de comunhão com Ele. Pertencemos a Deus. O primeiro lugar deve ser dEle — em paz, sossego, descanso e convÃvio com o Senhor. Não podemos fazer a obra do Mestre sem o poder do Mestre. Devemos dar prioridade a Ele, à Sua Palavra, ao Seu amor e poder, e assim seremos fortes. Não conseguimos chegar a lugar algum com a nossa própria força.
É o óleo que deve queimar, não o pavio, pois sem óleo o pavio é consumido. Devemos deixá-lO queimar para iluminar nosso caminho e não tentarmos arder por conta própria. Caso contrário, vamos nos desgastar e não iluminar nada. A chama é linda e brilhante, forte, quando temos o óleo. Mas quando apenas o pavio queima, a chama fica fraca e solta uma fumaça mal cheirosa.
O pavio precisar estar bem imerso no óleo. A maior parte do pavio deve ficar no óleo e apenas uma pontinha em contato com o ar e a chama. O que arde é, sobretudo, o óleo; muito pouco do pavio, quase nada. E o óleo flui livremente por um pavio imerso no óleo. Se assim for, o que queima é o óleo e não o pavio, produzindo luz clara e pura para iluminar a casa com a beleza da perfeição de Deus e na santidade da Sua luz.
Já não sou eu quem vive, mas Cristo vive em mim. A vida que agora vivo no corpo, vivo-a pela fé no filho de Deus.[11] Não sou eu que ardo, mas Cristo em mim, produzindo luz pura, brilhante e linda.
Quando eu era jovem, todas as casas tinham uns lindos lampiões à base de querosene que ficavam sobre as mesas. Tinham umas lindas bases de vidro que deixavam à vista o querosene. Dessa forma, era possÃvel ver o nÃvel de óleo, quanto o pavio estava imerso e quando precisava reabastecer para que a chama não produzisse fumaça.
O lampião funcionava melhor quando estava cheio de querosene, porque assim o querosene queimava, não o pavio. Não sou eu que queimo, mas Cristo em mim!
IsaÃas disse: “Vinde, comprai, sem dinheiro e sem preço, vinho e leite. Por que gastais o dinheiro naquilo que não é pão, e o produto do vosso trabalho naquilo que não pode satisfazer? Ouvi-me atentamente, e comei o que é bom, e a vossa alma se deleite com a gordura.”[12]
Às vezes, esforçamo-nos e trabalhamos demais, tentando fazer tudo sozinhos, quando precisamos deixar o Senhor arder e fluir através de nós. Deixe Jesus brilhar.
Jesus me abrigou dos cuidados da vida,
No amor divino me refugio;
Ele entende meus anelos,
E sussurra docemente: “Tu és Meu”.
Só Jesus, só Jesus,
Somente Ele satisfaz!
Cada fardo se torna uma benção
Quando Ele perto está.
—A. B. Christiansen
Só encontraremos satisfação verdadeira no Senhor.
Nos efêmeros prazeres do Mundo
Nenhuma satisfação encontrei!
Construà cisternas fracas
E com a sua secura me envergonhei.
Não encontrei fonte nenhuma
Que satisfizesse minha necessidade.
Somente Cristo me saciou
E satisfez de verdade!
Em Cristo não há decepção!
Todas as ânsias do meu ser
NEle encontraram realização!
E Ele descanso me deu!
Eu O coloquei à prova.
Ele provou ser mais do que sonhei!
Cristo não é um desapontamento,
Ele é tudo o que eu queria!
—C. W. Waggoner
Deixa para Ele! Entregue para Ele!
Lance o seu fardo sobre o Senhor e deixe-O carregar!
Se confiar sem duvidar, sempre vai ter solução.
Leve o seu fardo ao Senhor e deixe nas Suas mãos.
—Charles Tindley
Deixe por conta do Senhor, sabendo que só Ele pode resolver os problemas e fazer o trabalho. Muitos levam os fardos ao Senhor e os colocam no altar, mas depois dão meia-volta, pegam-no de novo e vão embora com os mesmos fardos. Não somos capazes de resolver os problemas. Jesus tem de resolvê-los. Descanse e deixe Deus fazer. A nós cabe deixar o Senhor brilhar através de nós. Devemos deixar o óleo fluir; deixar o Senhor fluir; deixá-lO agir. Deixe o Senhor atuar!
As pessoas muito dinâmicas em particular têm a tendência de agir com a sua força. Só que essa força natural é limitada. Homens de força são homens de faltas, e a maior falta é seguir adiante com a sua força em vez de deixar Deus agir.
Que o Senhor o aben̤oe e guarde e fa̤a de voc̻ uma grande b̻n̤̣o para muitos Рna Sua for̤a e pelo Seu poder!
Darei toda a glória a Jesus,
Seu amor cantarei,
Seu eterno amor.
Darei toda a glória a Jesus,
E falarei do Seu grande amor.
—Autor anônimo
Publicado originalmente em março de 1983. Adaptado e republicado em janeiro 2014. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Copyright@afi.org
Footnotes:
[1] NVI.
[2] IsaÃas 30:15.
[3] Salmo 55:22.
[4] Mateus 11:28–30.
[5] Salmo 37:3.
[6] Salmo 121:2; Tiago 1:5.
[7] Mateus 7:9–11.
[8] Gênesis 2:7.
[9] Mateus 25:1–13.
[10] Mateus 6:33.
[11] Gálatas 2:20.
[12] IsaÃas 55:1–2.
D. Brandt Berg
Descanse somente em Deus, ó minha alma; dele vem a minha esperança. —Salmo 62:5[1]
Um erro comum entre obreiros cristãos é trabalhar demais, além da sua capacidade. Precisam se poupar um pouco para o Senhor; descansar, quando estiverem cansados. Quando estiverem exaustos, devem se retirar da luta e entregar a batalha a outros. Precisam saber quando lutar e quando sossegar, quando colocar na mão de outros e quando orar. Quando salvam os outros, com certeza não conseguem salvar a si mesmos. Mas existem ocasiões quando devem salvar a si próprios para poderem salvar muitos outros.
Às vezes, é preciso escolher entre o que é bom e o que é melhor para o Reino. Reservar o melhor de si para o Senhor, dar o melhor para o Noivo, dar a Ele o primeiro lugar. Devemos dar o primeiro lugar a Jesus, à convivência com Ele e ao Seu amor. Devemos aprender a descansar nos Seus braços e não trabalharmos tanto com a nossa própria força. Todos precisamos aprender a separar o melhor que temos para o Senhor.
“No sossego e na confiança estará a sua força.”[2] “Lança os teus cuidados sobre o Senhor e Ele te sustentará!”[3] “Vinde a Mim todos os que estão cansados e sobrecarregados. Tomai sobre vós o meu jugo e aprendei de mim que sou manso e humilde de coração, e encontrareis descanso para vossas almas. Porque o meu jugo é suave e o meu fardo é leve.”[4] Às vezes, tentamos carregar demais e excedemos nossa capacidade. Precisamos deixar mais por conta do Senhor. “Lança o teu fardo sobre o Senhor e Ele te susterá. Confia no Senhor e faz o bem e verdadeiramente serás alimentado e habitarás na terra por longos dias”,[5] pois Ele o sustentará.
“A força vem do Senhor, que a todos dá liberalmente e não o lança em rosto.”[6] “Qual de vocês, se seu filho pedir pão, lhe dará uma pedra? Ou se pedir peixe, lhe dará uma cobra? Se vocês, apesar de serem maus, sabem dar boas coisas aos seus filhos, quanto mais o Pai de vocês, que está nos céus, dará coisas boas aos que lhe pedirem”,[7] e os susterá.
Todos precisamos aprender a depender mais do Senhor, a deixar mais por Sua conta. Não temos condições de fazer tudo. É humanamente e fisicamente impossÃvel! Devemos fazer o que podemos cada dia e deixar o resto por conta do Senhor. Se não conseguimos, Ele tem que fazer. “Ele sabe, Ele ama, Ele cuida. Nada pode obscurecer a Sua verdade. Ele dá o melhor aos que guardam o melhor para Ele”.
Senhor, ajude cada um a aprender a distribuir bem tempo e reservar o melhor para Você, a descansar do trabalho nos Seus braços para receber Sua força, a força que vem do Seu amor e do contato com Você, a qual encontramos quando Lhe damos o melhor de nós.
“E encontrareis descanso para vossas almas.” Poucas pessoas entendem que a alma é a combinação de corpo e espÃrito.[8] Se não descansarmos no EspÃrito vamos ficar cansados no corpo, precisamos aprender a descansar no EspÃrito para pouparmos nossos corpos e termos forças para ministrar a outros. Porque a força vem do Senhor que fez os céus e a terra, e nossos corpos. Ele sabe que nossa maior necessidade é de paz, convÃvio com Ele, e de nos alimentarmos com a Sua Palavra.
Devemos primeiro partilhar dos frutos para então alimentarmos os outros. Não podemos alimentar as pessoas se não nos alimentarmos. Devemos alimentar nossa alma para podermos partir o pão com outros. Não podemos dar tudo e ficar sem nada, caso contrário, vamos ficar sem óleo para quando o Noivo chegar.[9] Precisamos buscar primeiro o Rei e o Seu Reino, então todas as outras coisas nos serão acrescentadas pelo Seu poder, força, Reino, fortaleza, e a seu tempo — se dermos prioridade a Ele.[10]
Não podemos nos desgastar completamente no serviço prestado aos outros, a ponto de não sobrar nada para nós ou para o Rei. Precisamos aprender a reservar o primeiro lugar para Ele e para os momentos de comunhão com Ele. Pertencemos a Deus. O primeiro lugar deve ser dEle — em paz, sossego, descanso e convÃvio com o Senhor. Não podemos fazer a obra do Mestre sem o poder do Mestre. Devemos dar prioridade a Ele, à Sua Palavra, ao Seu amor e poder, e assim seremos fortes. Não conseguimos chegar a lugar algum com a nossa própria força.
É o óleo que deve queimar, não o pavio, pois sem óleo o pavio é consumido. Devemos deixá-lO queimar para iluminar nosso caminho e não tentarmos arder por conta própria. Caso contrário, vamos nos desgastar e não iluminar nada. A chama é linda e brilhante, forte, quando temos o óleo. Mas quando apenas o pavio queima, a chama fica fraca e solta uma fumaça mal cheirosa.
O pavio precisar estar bem imerso no óleo. A maior parte do pavio deve ficar no óleo e apenas uma pontinha em contato com o ar e a chama. O que arde é, sobretudo, o óleo; muito pouco do pavio, quase nada. E o óleo flui livremente por um pavio imerso no óleo. Se assim for, o que queima é o óleo e não o pavio, produzindo luz clara e pura para iluminar a casa com a beleza da perfeição de Deus e na santidade da Sua luz.
Já não sou eu quem vive, mas Cristo vive em mim. A vida que agora vivo no corpo, vivo-a pela fé no filho de Deus.[11] Não sou eu que ardo, mas Cristo em mim, produzindo luz pura, brilhante e linda.
Quando eu era jovem, todas as casas tinham uns lindos lampiões à base de querosene que ficavam sobre as mesas. Tinham umas lindas bases de vidro que deixavam à vista o querosene. Dessa forma, era possÃvel ver o nÃvel de óleo, quanto o pavio estava imerso e quando precisava reabastecer para que a chama não produzisse fumaça.
O lampião funcionava melhor quando estava cheio de querosene, porque assim o querosene queimava, não o pavio. Não sou eu que queimo, mas Cristo em mim!
IsaÃas disse: “Vinde, comprai, sem dinheiro e sem preço, vinho e leite. Por que gastais o dinheiro naquilo que não é pão, e o produto do vosso trabalho naquilo que não pode satisfazer? Ouvi-me atentamente, e comei o que é bom, e a vossa alma se deleite com a gordura.”[12]
Às vezes, esforçamo-nos e trabalhamos demais, tentando fazer tudo sozinhos, quando precisamos deixar o Senhor arder e fluir através de nós. Deixe Jesus brilhar.
Jesus me abrigou dos cuidados da vida,
No amor divino me refugio;
Ele entende meus anelos,
E sussurra docemente: “Tu és Meu”.
Só Jesus, só Jesus,
Somente Ele satisfaz!
Cada fardo se torna uma benção
Quando Ele perto está.
—A. B. Christiansen
Só encontraremos satisfação verdadeira no Senhor.
Nos efêmeros prazeres do Mundo
Nenhuma satisfação encontrei!
Construà cisternas fracas
E com a sua secura me envergonhei.
Não encontrei fonte nenhuma
Que satisfizesse minha necessidade.
Somente Cristo me saciou
E satisfez de verdade!
Em Cristo não há decepção!
Todas as ânsias do meu ser
NEle encontraram realização!
E Ele descanso me deu!
Eu O coloquei à prova.
Ele provou ser mais do que sonhei!
Cristo não é um desapontamento,
Ele é tudo o que eu queria!
—C. W. Waggoner
Deixa para Ele! Entregue para Ele!
Lance o seu fardo sobre o Senhor e deixe-O carregar!
Se confiar sem duvidar, sempre vai ter solução.
Leve o seu fardo ao Senhor e deixe nas Suas mãos.
—Charles Tindley
Deixe por conta do Senhor, sabendo que só Ele pode resolver os problemas e fazer o trabalho. Muitos levam os fardos ao Senhor e os colocam no altar, mas depois dão meia-volta, pegam-no de novo e vão embora com os mesmos fardos. Não somos capazes de resolver os problemas. Jesus tem de resolvê-los. Descanse e deixe Deus fazer. A nós cabe deixar o Senhor brilhar através de nós. Devemos deixar o óleo fluir; deixar o Senhor fluir; deixá-lO agir. Deixe o Senhor atuar!
As pessoas muito dinâmicas em particular têm a tendência de agir com a sua força. Só que essa força natural é limitada. Homens de força são homens de faltas, e a maior falta é seguir adiante com a sua força em vez de deixar Deus agir.
Que o Senhor o aben̤oe e guarde e fa̤a de voc̻ uma grande b̻n̤̣o para muitos Рna Sua for̤a e pelo Seu poder!
Darei toda a glória a Jesus,
Seu amor cantarei,
Seu eterno amor.
Darei toda a glória a Jesus,
E falarei do Seu grande amor.
—Autor anônimo
Publicado originalmente em março de 1983. Adaptado e republicado em janeiro 2014. Tradução Hebe Rondon Flandoli. Copyright@afi.org
Footnotes:
[1] NVI.
[2] IsaÃas 30:15.
[3] Salmo 55:22.
[4] Mateus 11:28–30.
[5] Salmo 37:3.
[6] Salmo 121:2; Tiago 1:5.
[7] Mateus 7:9–11.
[8] Gênesis 2:7.
[9] Mateus 25:1–13.
[10] Mateus 6:33.
[11] Gálatas 2:20.
[12] IsaÃas 55:1–2.
F:W:Boreham - The Greatest Christian Essayist Ever
By Dr Andrew Corbett
http://www.findingtruthmatters.org/devotions/boreham.html
Perhaps the most unrecognised writer within all of Christendom is the little known, but widely read, Frank William (F.W.) Boreham. Despite being unknown to most Australians he is still the best selling Australian author of all time with many of his books going into as many as 24 reprint editions! Today his books are collector's items selling for around $500 each, and even up to $1000. They are now mostly available from the U.K. and U.S.A. And little wonder. When introduced to an assembly of Presbyterian Pastors in Scotland in 1936, he was introduced with:
“The man whose name is on all our lips, whose books are on our shelves and whose illustrations are in all our sermons.”
Frank Boreham wrote some 55 books and more than 3000 editorials for theHobart Mercury and The Melbourne Age. He was a master story teller and showed better than any other Christian author that God could be relevant in ways never before considered. Among the classics of Christian-must-read literature, including Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Practicing The Presence of God, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, The Chronicles of Narnia, is now considered Boreham's "A Bunch of Everlastings". People have literally died clutching that book to their chests as they drew some last moments of comfort from the words Boreham had masterfully penned. I would rate this book as the one of the best books I have ever read. I now own several copies of this book which I selectively share with those enquire about my fascination with Boreham's writings. If you want a copy of this book you'll have to look in antiquarian or second hand bookstores as it hasn't been published since the 1950s (it was first published around 1916). You should expect to pay up to $40 a copy (depending on the edition). But for some of Boreham's other, and now rarer, books you can expect to pay up to $500 and even up to $1000 for the rarest editions! Yet this former pastor of the Hobart Baptist Church is hardly known in his adopted countries of Australia and New Zealand.
"For as long as I can remember, Dr. F.W.Boreham was part of my life. I was first introduced to his books as a primary school student...As a teenage preacher I used his books to gain ideas for sermons which- unbelievably today-were aimed at teenage audiences!"
Rev. Dr Gordon Moyes
NAVIGATING STRANGE SEAS, The F.W. Boreham Story from Dr Andrew Corbett on Vimeo.
F.W. BOREHAM'S BIRTH
Frank Boreham was born in England in 1871. He was particularly blessed with amazing parents. His father seemed to Frank to be the most inquisitive man on earth. His mother seemed to him to be not only the most beautiful woman on earth but also the best story-teller in the world. Frank inherited both these traits in generous proportions. His almost insatiable curiosity, his deep faith, and his warm manner were destined from his childhood. His parents were committed church-goers and felt strongly enough about church integrity that they left their close-by Anglican church to attend a 'non-conformist' church.
When Frank was not much more than a baby he was taken in a pram for a walk in a nearby park. This is one of those few and curious occasions where something virtually inexplicable happened. An older "gypsy" woman came over to the infant in the pram and 'prophesied' over him. "Put a pen in his hand and he'll never want for anything." She could have never have naturally known how understated he prediction would be!
CHILDHOOD
Frank had a delightful education in which he excelled. By his own admission he was not particularly good at sport, and perhaps to compensate for this deficiency he read books. It was at this early stage of his life that he was introduced to an institution in which he was to frequent in various locations throughout the rest of his life: the library. Each day after school he dropped into his small local library and devoured adventure books and biographies. Combined with his mother's broad literary knowledge and brief encounter with Charles Dickens, young Frank became an extremely well-read young man which laid a foundation of knowledge for him from which he was later base many of the illustrations in his 55 books.
“Its sylvan valleys, bespangled with primroses and bluebells and violets, its fragrant hedgerows aglow with the hawthorn and the honeysuckle; its exquisite parks carpeted with an infinite variety of ferns and flowers; its verdant and undulating common…its magnificent forests; its romantic walks; its arching avenues; its giant rocks and dainty mosses…”
FW Boreham, Loose Leaves: From The Journal of my Voyage Round the World (Mosgiel: “Taieri Advocate” Office, 1902), 44.
His fond memories of Tunbridge Wells and his ability to reflect upon his natural environment from quite a young age, largely inspired by his father's contagious fascination with flora and fauna, caused him to later write with great affection for the mountains of New Zealand, the bush of Australia and the lawns of English gardens. It was around this time that he became fascinated with his Grandfather to whom he was often sent by his parents and marvelled that these visits often caused the addition of a brother or sister to his family. His Grandfather was a deeply religious man. One day Frank walked into his Grandfather's lounge room and discovered him reading his Bible. Apparently he was reading it for pleasure. This left an indelible impression upon young Frank as he had never previously connected the words "sacred" and "worship" with the idea of "pleasure". He was to ponder this for years to come.
YOUTH
Frank raced through secondary school due to his unusual ability to learn quickly. By 14 he had essentially graduated High School and soon after acquired a good grip of most of the classics including the Greek language through doing night school at the local Mechanics Institute. (This later enabled him to complete a 4 year ministerial training program in just two years.) In his autobiography, My Pilgrimage, he implies that his formal education was stopped early due to his parents' inability to further pay the necessary fees. This meant that Frank had to enter the workforce. He became a clerk for a brick manufacturer. This inadvertantly equipped him to be able to write quickly in short-hand (a skill he taught himself and mastered during a later 5 month hospital stint), a talent which he would use throughout the course of his life.
This new job led to an amazingly understated turning point in his life. One day Frank was walking carelessly across some of the company's rail tracks and failed to see an oncoming rail carriage which hit him and dragged him underneath severing his foot and leaving him suffering and incapacitated in hospital for 5 months with septicaemia and as an invalid for the rest of his life. Yet, in his life story he lightly glosses over this episode and never refers to his injury in any of his books! After he recuperated he had to learn to walk with the aid of a walking stick. Returning to work on his first day back he set off on a cold day for his three mile trek to the Brickworks. No sooner had he left through the family gate that his father heard his son crash on the icey pavement in pain. He had slipped and broken his damaged leg. (He would go on to break this leg another three times throughout his life.) His father recognising that such a long walk to work was not going to be possible for his son arranged for him to work in the city of London after his recovery.
LONDON
“The impact of London upon my boyish spirit was the greatest sensation I have ever known. London took my breath away. It appalled me. I had never imagined such pushing, jostling multitudes. I remember standing in the heart of the world’s metropolis, under the very shadow of St Paul’s, and shivering in the thick of the crowd at my own utter loneliness…”
(My Pilgrimage, 58-59.)
After Frank's recuperation, during months of dire illness as a result of his accident, he took up a position in London as a clerk when he was still a teen. He describes this as the loneliest time of his life. Partly to alleviate this loneliness he sought out a church to attend. Prior to leaving Tunbridge Wells his pastor had written a letter to him. This had a profound affect on him. He kept that letter on his writing desk till the day he died. It was not just the content of the letter that impressed (his pastor had urged Frank to accept Christ by subtlely pointing out that people are not Christians by virtue of church attendance, being good, or having Christian parents and thatconfirmation was the natural response of those who had experienced new birth through Christ) but it was also the medium which impressed Boreham. A letter as a pastoral tool. When Boreham himself became a pastor he used this device to great affect in pastoring those in his charge.
Frank came across several church groups in London which profoundly influenced him. He joined a non-conformist church, like his childhood one, but was drawn to a group of street preachers who practiced several things his limited church experience had not exposed him to. This included the "laying on of hands" and water-baptism by full immersion for adults. It was around this time that Frank received Christ and therefore became a Christian. At the age of 17 he wrote to his Tunbridge Wells pastor and told him the good news. He also searched the Scriptures to ascertain whether adult water baptism was Biblical. Becoming convinced that it indeed was, he was baptised.
He was also introduced to street preaching and seemed to excel at it. In fact, so good was he at it, that two life-changing things were soon to happen. By the time he was about 22 he became convinced that God had called him to the ministry. He resolved to prepare for this call. This was the first profound thing. The second was like it. Exploring the possibility that his ministry might be on foreign soil he met with Hudson Taylor for afternoon tea to inverstigate going to China. Hudson Taylor saw the limping Boreham and squashed the idea. Boreham resolved that if he couldn't go to the Mission field he would commit his life and ministry to helping those who could. Frank continued to gain prominence as a street preacher and caught the attention of Charles Spurgeon who invited him to enrol in his Pastors Training College. Just two days after Spurgeon signed Boreham's application, the Prince of Preachers died. F.W. Boreham was the last student to recruited and approved by Charles Spurgeon.
Boreham thrived in Bible College. While serving in one of the Metropolitan Tabernacle's pioneer churches at Theydon Bois (just outside London) as a student preacher he became besotted with a young lady five years his junior. While he never made his feelings known to her, although he longed to kiss her during one romantic stroll (an impulse he didn't act on - but rectified when she came to bid him farewell at the dock when he was leaving for New Zealand).
Boreham's Bible College training was cut short for two reasons. Firstly, he had already mastered most of the subjects taught in the final year (including Greek) and therefore was considered to have graduated and secondly with the tragic death of Charles Spurgeon his son had been called back from New Zealand to oversee the Mettab (Metropolitan Tabernacle). After prayer, in which the young Boreham had been praying about his future, he felt God speak to him about serving Him in foreign countries. As Boreham prayerfully dreamed, he told God that he would like to serve Him overseas (despite what Hudson Taylor had said was possible for him) and that he would like to pastor three churches for a decade each and then be available to churches of various denominations for the final phase of his ministry.
Shortly after praying this way, he had a fellow student approach him and say that he felt God was going to call him to New Zealand. About this time he was summoned to see Mr Spurgeon. He presented himself and was invited by Spurgeon to accept the invitation of Mosgiel Baptist, a small rural church south of Duneedan, New Zealand.
MOSGIEL
At the age of 24 in 1896 F.W. Boreham arrived in New Zealand to take up the pastorate of Mosgiel Baptist. New Zealand was less than 50 years old as a European settlement at this time. Mosgiel was then a pioneer town of around 1,000 people. Boreham's affection for Stella was unabated. He wrote an unhopeful letter of proposal to her from New Zealand inviting her to come to New Zealand to be his bride. Amazingly, she accepted! They would go on to have 5 children.
Mosgiel became the unlikely launching pad for the greatest Christian essayist of all time to commence writing prolifically. Boreham approached the nearby Duneedan newspaper and enquired about organising a regular religious column. They agreed to the idea and from then Boreham's sermons were converted to concise newspaper articles which would later appear in the Hobart Mercury and Melbourne Age weekly for 36 years.
HOBART & ARMADALE
Boreham served the Mosgiel Baptist church for 12 years. Then one day his wife Stella said to him that she sensed the Lord was going to send them to Hobart, Tasmania. He did. He served Hobart Tabernacle for 10 years until 1916 and ministered to civic leaders, politicians, businessmen and visitors from across Australia. During the war years he served tirelessly - working every day of 1915 - culminating in him having a physical breakdown by 1916. This was compounded by several serious falls when he broke his leg and damaged his hip. Yet his writing continued and amazingly his references to his own difficulties were absent. He was then invited to Armadale Baptist, Melbourne, which had a structured staff to assist Boreham concentrate on what he did best: preach and write. He served them for 12 years and was invited back often after his retirement. He then went on a tour of North America (including Canada) and the British Isles.
HIS SERMONS BECOME BOOKS
Boreham lamented that he was not a more evangelistically effective preacher. Very few people came to Christ directly as a result of his preaching. During his time in Mosgiel, although he had great affection for the people, he felt somewhat wasted in such a small town at the other end of the earth. He never voiced these frustrations though. Instead, he took his Sunday sermons preached to a few dozen people, put them to paper and published some of these in the local newspaper and eventually became the editor of the New Zealand Baptist magazine where some others also appeared. He also sent some on to a Christian newspaper in Australia who gladly published them.
Shortly after arriving in New Zealand, Boreham was taken under the wing of Rev. John Doke who greatly impressed him. Frank marvelled at the depth of knowledge and wisdom Doke had despite his lack of formal education. Enquiring into how this happened, Mr Doke gave the young Boreham perhaps the most profound advice he was ever to receive. "Read!" said Mr Doke. "Read what?" asked Boreham. "Start with Gibbon!" replied Doke. And so Boreham did. He began reading Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and made a commitment to buy and read one new book a week for the rest of his life. This was a commitment, reflected Boreham, that financially strained his young family to breaking point at times but was to later reap huge dividends way beyond his initial investment.
About this time Boreham made a commitment to be an emminent preacher. He reasoned that actors and barristers spend a large amount of their time, energy and money to learn how to present their case before a jury in order to defend their client or entertain their audience, then how much more should those who fill the office of preacher study to become more proficient in their craft than barristers and actors since they are dealing with matters that are immense, infinite and eternal? So Boreham made regular trips to Court rooms and theatres to learn. In some respects he found his newly acquired preaching skills to be way beyond his small rural congregation. He longed for a larger audience. This partly came about when he accepted the call to Hobart, Tasmania. But even there he found indifference and irregular attendance a huge challenge. He determined to preach with such vigour, passion, and interest that he would reverse these negatives. One Sunday night he spontaneously announced that starting next Sunday and for every second Sunday night following he would be dealing Texts That Changed The World. Perhaps those Sunday night congregational attendances never quite grew to Boreham's expectations. I think every pastor and preacher has felt this pain. But what resulted was Boreham committing these sermons to print and were soon after published as A Bunch of Everlastings. This book was to sell in the millions and go through some 24 reprints!
Toward the end of Boreham's ministry he went on a tour of the USA and Canada. He was stunned at the level of admiration and affection he received from Americans who had grown to love his books over the previous 30 years. When he arrived in Canada he was greeted as "Dr. Boreham" and went to correct his host who informed him that he had been given an honourary doctorate in divinity from the same Seminary which his hero, F.B. Meyer, had also been honoured. Travelling across the Atlantic to the U.K. he was overwhelmed with his reception. In Ireland his wife was publically honoured for her years of support of her husband's ministry. Boreham was to almost tearfully respond by saying that he would forever be in the debt of Ireland for their warmth and thoughtfulness especially toward his wife. It was after this tour that Boreham reflected on the enormous numbers of people from both of these continents who thanked him for his books which had brought them to faith in Christ. It was then that Boreham realised that his years of toil in research for his preaching had not been wasted as God had indeed used him to be most effective in evangelising.
BOREHAM'S CONTRIBUTION
Frank Boreham was a masterful writer and preacher who drew large crowds in his latter years of ministry at Armadale and then during his lunch hour ministry at the inner city Presbyterian Church (which he did until he was 84). His books have had a profound impact on preachers and pastors all across the globe. None the least of these was Billy Graham who met with FWB on his first visit to Australia. With one brief painful exception which took place early in his ministry, Boreham never used his writings to attack. Instead, he hoped to cause his reader to think, ponder, and appreciate. His terms of reference were summed up in his own words about the august responsibility of a minister of the Gospel: immensities, infinities and eternities. He sought to help his audience appreciate the immensity of God and His wondrous creation. This refusal to distinguish between sacred and secular led Boreham to regard Aunts, lawns, sleep and wet paint as somehow demonstrating the majesty of God. For those serious about preaching and maximising its effect, the writings of FWB cannot be overlooked as thousands of preachers have already discovered and tens of thousands will yet. In recent times this has been aided by Dr Geoff Pound setting up the FW Boreham official blog site, and Kregel Press in the USA beginning to reprint some of Boreham's books.
If you come across one of F.W. Boreham's many books in a second-hand bookstore, garage-sale, or an eBay listing - do yourself a favour! BUY IT! Serious collectors are now paying between $500 to $1000 for some of his rarer editions! If you are not interested in reading any of Boreham's books, but stumble across a neglected volume in some jumble sale, please buy it and send to me! It may just be one of the 15 titles that I am yet acquire and am the worse off for having not done so yet.
© Dr. Andrew Corbett, 22nd January 2007
POSTSCRIPT...
After writing this article I have been contacted by other admirers of the work and ministry of FWB. This has resulted in great blessing in my own work, ministry and life. One example of this is when FWB's Grandson contacted me. This led me to travel to North Queensland to meet with him and receive from him some of his Grandfather's private notes and books along with many newspaper clippings of FWB's work published in Australian newspapers. Thank you so much Phil! Over the coming months I will work to scan some of these works and make them available to the world. (2008)
The other blessing came recently from the Rev Les Nixon of Outback Mission Ministries. He has lent me some of audio recordings of FWB who was commission by ABC Radio during the 1940s to give a series of devotional radio talks. I have digitised these and now make them available for you to enjoy. Thank you Les! (2009)
F.W. Boreham's Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Radio Devotional Talks Given In The 1940s
1. John Fletcher
2. Mr Elder, Sins As Wheat
3. Walter Scott
4. Add add add
5. Unsearchable riches
View a catalogue of F.W. Boreham works
Discover more about Dr. F.W. Boreham and his work.
© Dr Andrew Corbett, January 22nd 2007, writing from Legana, Tasmania, Australia
This article may be copied and distributed if due credit is given to the author, the article is not altered, and the website- http://www.findingtruthmatters.org - is hyperlinked or referenced.
http://www.findingtruthmatters.org/devotions/boreham.html
Perhaps the most unrecognised writer within all of Christendom is the little known, but widely read, Frank William (F.W.) Boreham. Despite being unknown to most Australians he is still the best selling Australian author of all time with many of his books going into as many as 24 reprint editions! Today his books are collector's items selling for around $500 each, and even up to $1000. They are now mostly available from the U.K. and U.S.A. And little wonder. When introduced to an assembly of Presbyterian Pastors in Scotland in 1936, he was introduced with:
“The man whose name is on all our lips, whose books are on our shelves and whose illustrations are in all our sermons.”
Frank Boreham wrote some 55 books and more than 3000 editorials for theHobart Mercury and The Melbourne Age. He was a master story teller and showed better than any other Christian author that God could be relevant in ways never before considered. Among the classics of Christian-must-read literature, including Pilgrim's Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Practicing The Presence of God, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, The Chronicles of Narnia, is now considered Boreham's "A Bunch of Everlastings". People have literally died clutching that book to their chests as they drew some last moments of comfort from the words Boreham had masterfully penned. I would rate this book as the one of the best books I have ever read. I now own several copies of this book which I selectively share with those enquire about my fascination with Boreham's writings. If you want a copy of this book you'll have to look in antiquarian or second hand bookstores as it hasn't been published since the 1950s (it was first published around 1916). You should expect to pay up to $40 a copy (depending on the edition). But for some of Boreham's other, and now rarer, books you can expect to pay up to $500 and even up to $1000 for the rarest editions! Yet this former pastor of the Hobart Baptist Church is hardly known in his adopted countries of Australia and New Zealand."For as long as I can remember, Dr. F.W.Boreham was part of my life. I was first introduced to his books as a primary school student...As a teenage preacher I used his books to gain ideas for sermons which- unbelievably today-were aimed at teenage audiences!"
Rev. Dr Gordon Moyes
NAVIGATING STRANGE SEAS, The F.W. Boreham Story from Dr Andrew Corbett on Vimeo.
F.W. BOREHAM'S BIRTH
Frank Boreham was born in England in 1871. He was particularly blessed with amazing parents. His father seemed to Frank to be the most inquisitive man on earth. His mother seemed to him to be not only the most beautiful woman on earth but also the best story-teller in the world. Frank inherited both these traits in generous proportions. His almost insatiable curiosity, his deep faith, and his warm manner were destined from his childhood. His parents were committed church-goers and felt strongly enough about church integrity that they left their close-by Anglican church to attend a 'non-conformist' church.When Frank was not much more than a baby he was taken in a pram for a walk in a nearby park. This is one of those few and curious occasions where something virtually inexplicable happened. An older "gypsy" woman came over to the infant in the pram and 'prophesied' over him. "Put a pen in his hand and he'll never want for anything." She could have never have naturally known how understated he prediction would be!CHILDHOOD
Frank had a delightful education in which he excelled. By his own admission he was not particularly good at sport, and perhaps to compensate for this deficiency he read books. It was at this early stage of his life that he was introduced to an institution in which he was to frequent in various locations throughout the rest of his life: the library. Each day after school he dropped into his small local library and devoured adventure books and biographies. Combined with his mother's broad literary knowledge and brief encounter with Charles Dickens, young Frank became an extremely well-read young man which laid a foundation of knowledge for him from which he was later base many of the illustrations in his 55 books.“Its sylvan valleys, bespangled with primroses and bluebells and violets, its fragrant hedgerows aglow with the hawthorn and the honeysuckle; its exquisite parks carpeted with an infinite variety of ferns and flowers; its verdant and undulating common…its magnificent forests; its romantic walks; its arching avenues; its giant rocks and dainty mosses…”
FW Boreham, Loose Leaves: From The Journal of my Voyage Round the World (Mosgiel: “Taieri Advocate” Office, 1902), 44.
His fond memories of Tunbridge Wells and his ability to reflect upon his natural environment from quite a young age, largely inspired by his father's contagious fascination with flora and fauna, caused him to later write with great affection for the mountains of New Zealand, the bush of Australia and the lawns of English gardens. It was around this time that he became fascinated with his Grandfather to whom he was often sent by his parents and marvelled that these visits often caused the addition of a brother or sister to his family. His Grandfather was a deeply religious man. One day Frank walked into his Grandfather's lounge room and discovered him reading his Bible. Apparently he was reading it for pleasure. This left an indelible impression upon young Frank as he had never previously connected the words "sacred" and "worship" with the idea of "pleasure". He was to ponder this for years to come.YOUTH
Frank raced through secondary school due to his unusual ability to learn quickly. By 14 he had essentially graduated High School and soon after acquired a good grip of most of the classics including the Greek language through doing night school at the local Mechanics Institute. (This later enabled him to complete a 4 year ministerial training program in just two years.) In his autobiography, My Pilgrimage, he implies that his formal education was stopped early due to his parents' inability to further pay the necessary fees. This meant that Frank had to enter the workforce. He became a clerk for a brick manufacturer. This inadvertantly equipped him to be able to write quickly in short-hand (a skill he taught himself and mastered during a later 5 month hospital stint), a talent which he would use throughout the course of his life.This new job led to an amazingly understated turning point in his life. One day Frank was walking carelessly across some of the company's rail tracks and failed to see an oncoming rail carriage which hit him and dragged him underneath severing his foot and leaving him suffering and incapacitated in hospital for 5 months with septicaemia and as an invalid for the rest of his life. Yet, in his life story he lightly glosses over this episode and never refers to his injury in any of his books! After he recuperated he had to learn to walk with the aid of a walking stick. Returning to work on his first day back he set off on a cold day for his three mile trek to the Brickworks. No sooner had he left through the family gate that his father heard his son crash on the icey pavement in pain. He had slipped and broken his damaged leg. (He would go on to break this leg another three times throughout his life.) His father recognising that such a long walk to work was not going to be possible for his son arranged for him to work in the city of London after his recovery.
LONDON
“The impact of London upon my boyish spirit was the greatest sensation I have ever known. London took my breath away. It appalled me. I had never imagined such pushing, jostling multitudes. I remember standing in the heart of the world’s metropolis, under the very shadow of St Paul’s, and shivering in the thick of the crowd at my own utter loneliness…”
(My Pilgrimage, 58-59.)
After Frank's recuperation, during months of dire illness as a result of his accident, he took up a position in London as a clerk when he was still a teen. He describes this as the loneliest time of his life. Partly to alleviate this loneliness he sought out a church to attend. Prior to leaving Tunbridge Wells his pastor had written a letter to him. This had a profound affect on him. He kept that letter on his writing desk till the day he died. It was not just the content of the letter that impressed (his pastor had urged Frank to accept Christ by subtlely pointing out that people are not Christians by virtue of church attendance, being good, or having Christian parents and thatconfirmation was the natural response of those who had experienced new birth through Christ) but it was also the medium which impressed Boreham. A letter as a pastoral tool. When Boreham himself became a pastor he used this device to great affect in pastoring those in his charge.Frank came across several church groups in London which profoundly influenced him. He joined a non-conformist church, like his childhood one, but was drawn to a group of street preachers who practiced several things his limited church experience had not exposed him to. This included the "laying on of hands" and water-baptism by full immersion for adults. It was around this time that Frank received Christ and therefore became a Christian. At the age of 17 he wrote to his Tunbridge Wells pastor and told him the good news. He also searched the Scriptures to ascertain whether adult water baptism was Biblical. Becoming convinced that it indeed was, he was baptised.
He was also introduced to street preaching and seemed to excel at it. In fact, so good was he at it, that two life-changing things were soon to happen. By the time he was about 22 he became convinced that God had called him to the ministry. He resolved to prepare for this call. This was the first profound thing. The second was like it. Exploring the possibility that his ministry might be on foreign soil he met with Hudson Taylor for afternoon tea to inverstigate going to China. Hudson Taylor saw the limping Boreham and squashed the idea. Boreham resolved that if he couldn't go to the Mission field he would commit his life and ministry to helping those who could. Frank continued to gain prominence as a street preacher and caught the attention of Charles Spurgeon who invited him to enrol in his Pastors Training College. Just two days after Spurgeon signed Boreham's application, the Prince of Preachers died. F.W. Boreham was the last student to recruited and approved by Charles Spurgeon.Boreham thrived in Bible College. While serving in one of the Metropolitan Tabernacle's pioneer churches at Theydon Bois (just outside London) as a student preacher he became besotted with a young lady five years his junior. While he never made his feelings known to her, although he longed to kiss her during one romantic stroll (an impulse he didn't act on - but rectified when she came to bid him farewell at the dock when he was leaving for New Zealand).
Boreham's Bible College training was cut short for two reasons. Firstly, he had already mastered most of the subjects taught in the final year (including Greek) and therefore was considered to have graduated and secondly with the tragic death of Charles Spurgeon his son had been called back from New Zealand to oversee the Mettab (Metropolitan Tabernacle). After prayer, in which the young Boreham had been praying about his future, he felt God speak to him about serving Him in foreign countries. As Boreham prayerfully dreamed, he told God that he would like to serve Him overseas (despite what Hudson Taylor had said was possible for him) and that he would like to pastor three churches for a decade each and then be available to churches of various denominations for the final phase of his ministry.
Shortly after praying this way, he had a fellow student approach him and say that he felt God was going to call him to New Zealand. About this time he was summoned to see Mr Spurgeon. He presented himself and was invited by Spurgeon to accept the invitation of Mosgiel Baptist, a small rural church south of Duneedan, New Zealand.
MOSGIEL
At the age of 24 in 1896 F.W. Boreham arrived in New Zealand to take up the pastorate of Mosgiel Baptist. New Zealand was less than 50 years old as a European settlement at this time. Mosgiel was then a pioneer town of around 1,000 people. Boreham's affection for Stella was unabated. He wrote an unhopeful letter of proposal to her from New Zealand inviting her to come to New Zealand to be his bride. Amazingly, she accepted! They would go on to have 5 children.Mosgiel became the unlikely launching pad for the greatest Christian essayist of all time to commence writing prolifically. Boreham approached the nearby Duneedan newspaper and enquired about organising a regular religious column. They agreed to the idea and from then Boreham's sermons were converted to concise newspaper articles which would later appear in the Hobart Mercury and Melbourne Age weekly for 36 years.
HOBART & ARMADALE
Boreham served the Mosgiel Baptist church for 12 years. Then one day his wife Stella said to him that she sensed the Lord was going to send them to Hobart, Tasmania. He did. He served Hobart Tabernacle for 10 years until 1916 and ministered to civic leaders, politicians, businessmen and visitors from across Australia. During the war years he served tirelessly - working every day of 1915 - culminating in him having a physical breakdown by 1916. This was compounded by several serious falls when he broke his leg and damaged his hip. Yet his writing continued and amazingly his references to his own difficulties were absent. He was then invited to Armadale Baptist, Melbourne, which had a structured staff to assist Boreham concentrate on what he did best: preach and write. He served them for 12 years and was invited back often after his retirement. He then went on a tour of North America (including Canada) and the British Isles.HIS SERMONS BECOME BOOKS
Boreham lamented that he was not a more evangelistically effective preacher. Very few people came to Christ directly as a result of his preaching. During his time in Mosgiel, although he had great affection for the people, he felt somewhat wasted in such a small town at the other end of the earth. He never voiced these frustrations though. Instead, he took his Sunday sermons preached to a few dozen people, put them to paper and published some of these in the local newspaper and eventually became the editor of the New Zealand Baptist magazine where some others also appeared. He also sent some on to a Christian newspaper in Australia who gladly published them.Shortly after arriving in New Zealand, Boreham was taken under the wing of Rev. John Doke who greatly impressed him. Frank marvelled at the depth of knowledge and wisdom Doke had despite his lack of formal education. Enquiring into how this happened, Mr Doke gave the young Boreham perhaps the most profound advice he was ever to receive. "Read!" said Mr Doke. "Read what?" asked Boreham. "Start with Gibbon!" replied Doke. And so Boreham did. He began reading Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and made a commitment to buy and read one new book a week for the rest of his life. This was a commitment, reflected Boreham, that financially strained his young family to breaking point at times but was to later reap huge dividends way beyond his initial investment.About this time Boreham made a commitment to be an emminent preacher. He reasoned that actors and barristers spend a large amount of their time, energy and money to learn how to present their case before a jury in order to defend their client or entertain their audience, then how much more should those who fill the office of preacher study to become more proficient in their craft than barristers and actors since they are dealing with matters that are immense, infinite and eternal? So Boreham made regular trips to Court rooms and theatres to learn. In some respects he found his newly acquired preaching skills to be way beyond his small rural congregation. He longed for a larger audience. This partly came about when he accepted the call to Hobart, Tasmania. But even there he found indifference and irregular attendance a huge challenge. He determined to preach with such vigour, passion, and interest that he would reverse these negatives. One Sunday night he spontaneously announced that starting next Sunday and for every second Sunday night following he would be dealing Texts That Changed The World. Perhaps those Sunday night congregational attendances never quite grew to Boreham's expectations. I think every pastor and preacher has felt this pain. But what resulted was Boreham committing these sermons to print and were soon after published as A Bunch of Everlastings. This book was to sell in the millions and go through some 24 reprints!
Toward the end of Boreham's ministry he went on a tour of the USA and Canada. He was stunned at the level of admiration and affection he received from Americans who had grown to love his books over the previous 30 years. When he arrived in Canada he was greeted as "Dr. Boreham" and went to correct his host who informed him that he had been given an honourary doctorate in divinity from the same Seminary which his hero, F.B. Meyer, had also been honoured. Travelling across the Atlantic to the U.K. he was overwhelmed with his reception. In Ireland his wife was publically honoured for her years of support of her husband's ministry. Boreham was to almost tearfully respond by saying that he would forever be in the debt of Ireland for their warmth and thoughtfulness especially toward his wife. It was after this tour that Boreham reflected on the enormous numbers of people from both of these continents who thanked him for his books which had brought them to faith in Christ. It was then that Boreham realised that his years of toil in research for his preaching had not been wasted as God had indeed used him to be most effective in evangelising.BOREHAM'S CONTRIBUTION
Frank Boreham was a masterful writer and preacher who drew large crowds in his latter years of ministry at Armadale and then during his lunch hour ministry at the inner city Presbyterian Church (which he did until he was 84). His books have had a profound impact on preachers and pastors all across the globe. None the least of these was Billy Graham who met with FWB on his first visit to Australia. With one brief painful exception which took place early in his ministry, Boreham never used his writings to attack. Instead, he hoped to cause his reader to think, ponder, and appreciate. His terms of reference were summed up in his own words about the august responsibility of a minister of the Gospel: immensities, infinities and eternities. He sought to help his audience appreciate the immensity of God and His wondrous creation. This refusal to distinguish between sacred and secular led Boreham to regard Aunts, lawns, sleep and wet paint as somehow demonstrating the majesty of God. For those serious about preaching and maximising its effect, the writings of FWB cannot be overlooked as thousands of preachers have already discovered and tens of thousands will yet. In recent times this has been aided by Dr Geoff Pound setting up the FW Boreham official blog site, and Kregel Press in the USA beginning to reprint some of Boreham's books.
If you come across one of F.W. Boreham's many books in a second-hand bookstore, garage-sale, or an eBay listing - do yourself a favour! BUY IT! Serious collectors are now paying between $500 to $1000 for some of his rarer editions! If you are not interested in reading any of Boreham's books, but stumble across a neglected volume in some jumble sale, please buy it and send to me! It may just be one of the 15 titles that I am yet acquire and am the worse off for having not done so yet.© Dr. Andrew Corbett, 22nd January 2007
POSTSCRIPT...
After writing this article I have been contacted by other admirers of the work and ministry of FWB. This has resulted in great blessing in my own work, ministry and life. One example of this is when FWB's Grandson contacted me. This led me to travel to North Queensland to meet with him and receive from him some of his Grandfather's private notes and books along with many newspaper clippings of FWB's work published in Australian newspapers. Thank you so much Phil! Over the coming months I will work to scan some of these works and make them available to the world. (2008)
The other blessing came recently from the Rev Les Nixon of Outback Mission Ministries. He has lent me some of audio recordings of FWB who was commission by ABC Radio during the 1940s to give a series of devotional radio talks. I have digitised these and now make them available for you to enjoy. Thank you Les! (2009)
F.W. Boreham's Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Radio Devotional Talks Given In The 1940s
1. John Fletcher
2. Mr Elder, Sins As Wheat
3. Walter Scott
4. Add add add
5. Unsearchable riches
View a catalogue of F.W. Boreham works
Discover more about Dr. F.W. Boreham and his work.
© Dr Andrew Corbett, January 22nd 2007, writing from Legana, Tasmania, Australia
This article may be copied and distributed if due credit is given to the author, the article is not altered, and the website- http://www.findingtruthmatters.org - is hyperlinked or referenced.
ICONIC SPORTS ANNOUNCER NICK CHARLES TRUSTING JESUS IN FINAL DAYS OF LIFE
http://www.breakingchristiannews.com/articles/display_art.html?ID=8823
Teresa Neumann : Apr 8, 2011 : Wayne Drash - CNN
"I can't believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do." -Nick Charles
(Santa Fe, N.M.)—His career spanning 40 years, Nick Charles, 65—who grew up dirt poor in Chicago's inner-city—was CNN's first sports anchor. He was known for his Greek-American good-looks (People magazine once ranked him among the most handsome men in America), charisma and energy.
In 2009, Charles was diagnosed with incurable bladder cancer, and today—wasted from chemotherapy and a shadow of the man he was—he is trying to finish a video-blog for his 5-year-old daughter Giovanna, so that when he's gone, she can watch it and remember him.
In a CNN piece covering a conversation with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Charles, the faith of the latter is prominent. Charles minces no words in listing the mistakes he's made—and regretted—in his life, and glorifies Christ in the midst of his troubles.
Twice divorced, Charles states that divorce is an ugly thing. "I caused a lot of pain. I ripped apart lives," he says. "If I have a regret, that's it. I love all of them. With my illness, they've [his children] offered me a massive amount of forgiveness."
The CNN report says he reads the Bible often, and quotes Charles as saying that his wife brought him "back to the Lord" in the 1990s. The report also notes that doctors plan to give him morphine to ease the pain of his final days on earth.
As a Christian, it says, "he struggled with that concept. He wanted to make sure he wasn't committing suicide." But, assured by doctors that the pain-killer was only to keep him comfortable until the end.
Said Charles, at that point, "Peace came over me. I can't believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do."
As if the report (please follow the link below to read it in all it's fascinating, hardscrabble detail) wasn't poignant enough, Charles ended his conversation with Gupta by saying his ultimate message to his daughter Giovanna is that they will be together in Heaven forever, adding that he hopes his first interview when he gets to Heaven will be with Jesus.
His love and experience with the sport of boxing prompted him to conclude that when that day comes, "he'll dance around the ring, his head held high, a smile on his face."
"In the 12th round, somebody is going to raise my hand. I'm going to be victorious. I finally got my life right."
Facing death, CNN sports anchor Nick Charles embraces life
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nick Charles, CNN original and first sports anchor in network's history, dying of cancer
In early January, he called off all chemotherapy and began making preparations for death
He was diagnosed with incurable bladder cancer in August 2009
He says people should "fasten onto the positives" of life
Editor's note: Dr. Sanjay Gupta also interviewed Nick Charles about the final fight of his life. That conversation will appear soon on "Sanjay Gupta, MD". This story was reported and written by CNN's Wayne Drash.
Santa Fe, New Mexico (CNN) -- Nick Charles looks into the camera, as he's done thousands of times before. Except he's not calling a boxing match for sports fans around the world.
He's talking to an audience of one: his 5-year-old daughter, Giovanna.
Over the last 40 years, Charles has covered every major sporting event, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl to the Kentucky Derby. He's covered some of the most classic boxing matches -- when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, when Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear, when Roberto Duran quit and told Sugar Ray Leonard, "No mas."
Yet this is the toughest taping he'll ever deliver, a message from beyond the grave. For his little girl.
As Charles stares into the lens, he projects the essence of a fighter -- tough, rugged, still smiling despite the bruises of battle. His wife of 13 years, Cory, holds the camera.
Gone is his patented mop of black hair. Twice voted the sexiest sportscaster in America, Charles has undergone rounds of chemotherapy that darkened the circles under his eyes and "make me look like I'm halfway in the grave."
On August 4, 2009, Charles was told he had incurable bladder cancer. He was given four to six months to live if he opted for no treatment. With treatment, he could expect about 20 months.
"I want the biggest guns you can fire at me," he told the doctors.
He's into his 21st month now. Each day, each hour, each breath is a gift.
He's fought this hard for Giovanna and Cory, to build a foundation for them after he's gone. He knows what it's like to long for a father's love. He only has a dozen or so memories of his own father.
"My little girl needs a good daddy more than anything right now," he says. "This is a gift from God where I need to build these memories for her, so that I'm not a blur."
Former CNN sports anchor Nick Charles shares breakfast with his daughter, Giovanna, who is 5.
The family has begun making preparations. They meet with a counselor regularly. When he was diagnosed, Charles told Giovanna he was sick -- that his hair would fall out.
This time last year, she looked at him with her big brown eyes and asked: "Are you going to die?"
"Everybody will sometime," he told her, "but we will always be together. But I'm not going anywhere today. I feel great. Now let's go out and play."
Weeks earlier, Charles and his wife sat down to tape the first in a series of birthday videos he's leaving for Giovanna. The camera rolls. Charles sings. In TV terms, he nails it.
Giovanna Charles, the girl daddy loves with all his heart
Because she's cute, because she's smart
Because she's sweet, because she's strong
Because she's so much fun!
'A gift from God'
Giovanna races around the family's spacious contemporary adobe home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Still wearing the princess shoes from her 5th birthday party the day before, she clicks across the tile floor, squeals of delight bouncing off the high ceilings.
"A gift from God," Charles calls her. "A blessing who came to me late in life."
He has three grown children from two previous marriages. His impending death has brought him closer to them -- including a 39-year-old son who sat with him during chemo sessions.
Don't worry. Daddy will always be in your heart.
--Giovanna Charles, 5, to her mother
His focus has been on his youngest girl, keeping a written journal since she was born, and recording the birthday videos after his diagnosis. He only recorded a handful; he was sobbing so much off-camera he could barely hold it together to go past her 11th birthday.
When Charles mentions Giovanna by name, he chokes up. Every few days, he walks into her room and looks in her closet, at the princess outfits and leotards. He pictures her prom dress hanging there years from now, knowing he'll never see her in it.
He breaks down and cries.
For Cory, the pain is unbearable, to witness the slow decline of the person you love. The woman Charles calls his rock, the love of his life, collapsed when she and her husband first learned of his illness. A producer for CNN International, she has continued to work because it keeps her focused.
Yet she's already begun a grieving process to prepare "for when he won't be here." She's in touch with bereavement groups and camps to help children who have lost a parent.
When Giovanna recently saw her mother crying, the girl consoled her. "Don't worry," she said, "Daddy will always be in your heart."
"You can never know what it will feel like when someone dies and is gone and how you will handle it," says Cory, 45. "From young widows, I know the feeling is profoundly sad, especially when somebody has such a presence as Nick."
Both are willing to speak so openly about their ordeal because, as Cory puts it, "too many Americans fear death."
Adds Charles, "I embrace it." He fights through fear.
Charles has always set goals in life: short-term, mid-term and long-term. He'd like to live until one more Easter, until his dream home is complete in early May, until his 65th birthday on June 30.
"I don't know how long I have." Just waking up to live one more day is blissful.
In January, he called off all treatment.
"I said, 'I can't take this chemo any more. It's going to kill me before the cancer. I want to feel everything in life while I can.' "
Charles talks with hs wife, Cory, and their daughter at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In the evenings, as the sun sets, Charles stares out the window and contemplates life. Looking back at him are the mountains that surround his home.
The pain arcs through his body. His toes feel frozen.
"God, if you're ready to take me," he says, "I'm in so much pain. Please, I'm ready to come home."
But Charles says he feels "the presence of Christ in the room ... saying, 'This isn't the time yet.'
"One time, he sat right with me on the bed."
The mountains are known as Sangre de Cristo, the blood of Christ. Charles focuses on three peaks. "Mommy, Daddy, Giovanna," he says. A sign they'll always be together, a sign of eternity.
He says a special prayer for Giovanna: "Don't let my daughter find me."
Lessons for a champ
Happy 7th birthday, my darling.
You're in 2nd grade now.
I bet you're playing the piano very well
Probably learning many languages
I just wish you the best life offers -- always.
Charles shuffles through his kitchen when his cell phone rings. He pulls the phone from his pocket. It's Mike Tyson.
"MIKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" he says.
He beams with enthusiasm.
The two men speak by phone three or four times a week. They talk about life lessons and philosophize about Aristotle. Tyson has young children, too. He asks about being a good parent.
I try not to dwell on the mistakes. You can't undo them.
--Nick Charles
On this day, they hastily arrange a visit.
"I want to see you again," Charles says. "You're a true friend, Mike, and I love you!"
The two reunited for the first time in years in early March. They sat in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, the same place where Tyson took a chunk out of Holyfield's ear in 1997.
This time, Tyson wasn't dishing out punishment or acting in a rage. He was talking and listening, absorbing everything Charles had to tell him about life.
"I love you, brother," said Tyson. "I pray for you every day."
He told Charles to not give up, to keep hanging in strong -- that he needed him here longer.
Tyson clutched Charles' hands for 15 minutes. He refused to let go. When autograph seekers approached, Tyson flashed a bone-crushing look. They quickly scattered.
In Tyson's heyday, when he was the world's dominant boxer and one of sports' notorious bad boys, Charles would offer him advice. The reporter saw an inner-city kid who grew up without consequences, a young man with a lot of self-loathing, a guy with a lot of pain.
Charles knew the feeling. He grew up poor in inner-city Chicago, the son of a taxi driver who was mostly absent from his life. In grade school, during the frigid winters when his dad didn't pay the heat bills, Charles would curl up in bed with his mother and brother to stay warm.
He struggled in high school. He had no mentors. He was too busy working late-night jobs at produce docks in desolate Chicago neighborhoods. Once, his boss pointed to mounds of rat feces, threw lye all over the floor and handed the 17-year-old Charles a pair of gloves, rubber boots and a hoe.
"I'm inhaling this lye and I had to scrape all this stuff off. I said to myself, 'I need this job. I can't tell this guy to go take a flying leap,' " he says.
He had to fight for everything he got as a kid growing up.
--Jim Walton, CNN Worldwide president and Charles' field producer
"But I also said to myself, 'I'll never be trapped again in life. Never. Never.' That was a watershed, life-changing moment for me. It really drove me to the point where I had focus in my life."
Years later, when boxing promoter Don King first introduced Tyson to Charles in the 1980s, King shouted in his loquacious style, "He's one of us! He's a real guy! He came from nothing!"
At a time when Tyson trusted no one, he listened to Charles. "You can break me in two if you want," Charles would say before giving any advice, "but let me throw this out to you."
He told him about his own hard-scrabble life, of longing for a father's love, of the power of forgiveness, of digging deeper to better understand oneself.
Now, as Charles nears death, Tyson is like a sponge.
"He recalls conversations we had," says Charles. "He wants me to amplify it more. He wants to know what I've learned, because I've made mistakes in my life."
"I try not to dwell on the mistakes. You can't undo them. But I do try to fasten onto the positives, the things that drove me."
Charles says he got married too young, was too immature to know what a relationship entailed. He worked into the wee hours of the night. His job kept him on the road.
He first married at 22. He had a son, Jason, and a daughter, Melissa. He stayed married for eight years; Melissa was a toddler when he divorced.
His second marriage lasted about a dozen years. They adopted a baby girl from Korea. Katie, now 24, recently qualified for the Boston Marathon, he boasts.
Divorce is an ugly thing, and "innocent kids get hurt and lost in the middle.
"I caused a lot of pain. I ripped apart lives," he says. "If I have a regret, that's it. I love all of them."
He's recorded 10 hours of oral history -- essentially his life story -- for all his children to hear after he's gone.
"With my illness, they've offered me a massive amount of forgiveness."
Steak, scotch and dad
I can't even imagine 8 years old!
You're probably riding horses
You're probably standing up on the horse without a saddle.
That would be what I would expect from you
Because you're so athletic and strong and beautiful.
Charles longed for a relationship with his father, a machine-gunner in World War II who fought in ferocious battles in North Africa and Italy, earning a Bronze Star for his valor.
His father was rarely around to spend time with his two sons. He drove taxis at night. Other times, he just disappeared.
"He was a voracious reader," Charles says. "The few nights he was home, I used to sit with him and read. He'd have a pot of coffee on. It was the summer. We didn't have AC. It'd be 80 degrees outside.
Back when I was a kid, I remember thinking, 'Nick was the coolest guy ever!'
--Fred Hickman, Nick Charles' longtime TV partner
"I was maybe 15. I would just sit with him and read until 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, so I could just be next to him."
He still remembers the books they read: Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury."
"He did the best he could with me. I've come to peace with him."
His father was there for him on the most important day of his career, when he auditioned for his first television job in Springfield, Illinois, in the fall of 1970. At the time, the young Charles drove a taxi. He'd graduated a few months earlier from Columbia College Chicago, where he studied communications and journalism.
Father and son drove the 200 miles to Springfield together, the son in a freshly pressed suit, his soon-to-be signature hair perfect. After a two-hour audition for WICS, Charles hopped back into the car: "Dad, I think I did pretty good."
The two dined on steak and scotch.
"It was the greatest day. I felt like we were two men who had bonded."
Two days later, he got the job. He took a pay cut to enter the television business: $130 a week as a sports anchor, compared to $200 driving a taxi.
Born Nicholas Charles Nickeas, he was told by his news director that his Greek name was too ethnic, to change it to something more "vanilla."
At age 24, Nick Charles was born. In two weeks, he went from driving a taxi to having his face on the sides of buses.
Less than two years later, Charles took a giant professional leap, replacing a beloved sports anchor in Baltimore. His boss in Springfield told him, "Nick, you're making a huge mistake."
Nick Charles' life tipsDon't get married early.
Travel the world.
Have a love of language and literature.
Learn to love your own company so you're not needy.
Ask yourself where do you want to be tomorrow? What about in 5 years, 10 years?
What do I require in a relationship? What am I capable of giving?
Enjoy little moments and turn them into ecstasy.
Fasten onto the positives of life.
Go to the doctor -- even for the most routine checkup.
Charles endured months of angry phone calls from viewers and hostility among staff for replacing a legend. "It cut deeply."
Yet he persevered. Soon, he was No. 1 in Baltimore -- and viewers loved him.
Before the world would come to know him, there would be stumbles. He was canned from a station in Washington in 1979. He thought about quitting TV altogether.
The man who People magazine would eventually rank among the most handsome in America went into radio. "I enjoyed the humility."
In January 1980, his life changed forever. He got a call about a 24-hour news network being formed in Atlanta by Ted Turner.
Charles became the first sports anchor in CNN history. And it's at CNN where he shined.
In his prime, he teamed up with Fred Hickman on "Sports Tonight." The two had chemistry, charisma and dynamism -- a duo of boundless energy. They beat ESPN in ratings when both upstart networks were battling for every viewer.
Hickman, who grew up in Springfield, had long been a fan of Charles. "Back when I was a kid," Hickman says, "I remember thinking, 'Nick was the coolest guy ever!'
"We just clicked from the very beginning," Hickman says. "In television, you always have personality conflicts. Nick and I never had one. Nick and I have always had a tremendous relationship."
Fred Hickman teamed with Charles on "Sports Tonight." The two had chemistry and beat ESPN in the ratings.
Viewers tuned in every night to catch the latest sports news. Topps put Charles' million-dollar smile on a bubble gum card -- rare for a TV personality.
Women swooned. In airports, it was hard to go unnoticed. Fans would say: "I love you, Nick Charles! And I hate that guy Chris Berman on ESPN!"
The black-maned, olive-skinned beauty always had a line for them. "Please don't use that word -- hate. Berman is a friend."
The feelings were mutual. "We were competitors but we never felt that way," says Berman. "I have nothing but good things to say about Nick Charles -- nothing but admiration -- and I'd like him to know that."
Charles' field producer in those early days was Jim Walton, now president of CNN Worldwide. He and Charles traveled the globe together, eating at cheap food joints and working long hours.
The two were in Tokyo in 1990 when Tyson faced a weak opponent named Buster Douglas. They didn't plan to do many stories. Everyone in press row picked the undefeated world champ to win in the first round.
Charles had gone to Tyson's room the night before the fight. He saw a man who wasn't taking Douglas seriously. Tyson wanted to get the match over and fly back to the States.
But the unthinkable happened. Douglas knocked out Tyson in the 10th round.
"We scrambled," says Walton.
Always a lover of literature, Charles told viewers that Douglas "threw the book at him and it made for bad reading," one of his most famous lines.
"It speaks to the uncertainty," Charles now says of the match, "that anybody's cloak of invincibility can be ripped away."
Charles left CNN in 2001 when the network dropped sports. To this day, he and Hickman remain one of the longest anchor duos paired together in television. From CNN, Charles moved to Showtime to cover boxing.
Walton says Charles had always been drawn to the sport because "he had to fight for everything he got as a kid growing up."
It's that trait that's helping Charles in his current battle.
"He's handled this like a heavyweight champ," says Hickman. "If I can do as well living the rest of my life as he is living out the rest of his, then I will consider it a success."
Charles cries when he talks about the strength of boxers. He knows the sport is barbaric; he readily admits that. Yet when he looks at the ring, he sees young men like him from the inner city.
Charles, who boxed as a teen, says his upbringing "gave me a love of people who want to make it so bad."
"You're going to get hit. You have to take pain to get it," he says. "You have to fight through fear."
On that day in August 2009, when he was first given a death sentence, he promised himself: "There's no way I'm going to wimp out on this."
'Peace came over me'
Oh, happy 9th birthday.
And I hope you're listening to Mommy all the time
And I hope you're listening to music you love,
Maybe traveling to wonderful places.
It's just such a beautiful world
And so many glorious places to explore and just be captivated by.
Charles walks with a limp, part of the side effects of chemo. His famous hair is now gray, sparse and closely cropped.
He's taken phone calls from Bob Costas, Willard Scott and countless other television stars and athletes. He likes it even more when he hears from interns, cameramen, producers and fans -- the blue-collar people who always rooted for him.
Over the last 40 years, Charles has covered every major sporting event, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl.
Not many people, he says, are fortunate enough to attend their own memorial service. A slow death allows that. His brother died of a sudden heart attack in 1988 at age 43. His father died in 1975, his mother in 2003. He's the last of his immediate family.
He reads the Bible often. He sprinkles "God bless you" in his conversations. He says his wife "brought me back to the Lord" in the 1990s.
He's spent these final weeks with those he loves most. He's picked the music for his memorial service -- Edward Elgar's Sospiri op. 70, with the cello played by Sol Gabetta.
"It lifts my spirits."
Last month, he signed off on television for what is likely the last time after calling a featherweight fight on HBO. "Why am I doing this?" he told viewers. "To inspire others to do what they love."
"I had a smile on my face all night," he says now. "I was on fire!"
He's talked with counselors and hospice workers about his final week. It will go something like this: He'll lose his appetite first. After three days, he'll be unable to swallow and feel like he's drowning. His liver will stop functioning and other organs will follow. The cancer will take over completely.
He'll be given morphine to ease the pain. As a Christian, he struggled with that concept. He wanted to make sure he wasn't committing suicide.
"We're not pulling the plug on you early," he was told. "We're just keeping you comfortable until the end."
With those words, he says, "Peace came over me."
"I can't believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do."
He hopes his final words will be to that beautiful girl, Giovanna: "I'm going to heaven to prepare a place for you and ... we're going to be together forever."
Charles has traveled to 70 countries; he has one journey left. He hopes his first interview when he gets there will be with Jesus, followed by a round-table discussion with Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I'd ask them: What motivated them? What sparked them?"
When that day comes, he says, he'll dance around the ring, his head held high, a smile on his face. "In the 12th round, somebody is going to raise my hand. I'm going to be victorious.
"I finally got my life right."
If you're inspired by this story, Nick Charles and his family would be honored if you made a donation to help stop child trafficking and abuse, increase access to education and allow children to embrace life. Working with the humanitarian organization World Vision and the TEACH NOW: Preventing Child Labor in the Philippines project, the family welcomes support here: www.worldvision.org/EmbraceLife.
Teresa Neumann : Apr 8, 2011 : Wayne Drash - CNN
"I can't believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do." -Nick Charles
(Santa Fe, N.M.)—His career spanning 40 years, Nick Charles, 65—who grew up dirt poor in Chicago's inner-city—was CNN's first sports anchor. He was known for his Greek-American good-looks (People magazine once ranked him among the most handsome men in America), charisma and energy. In 2009, Charles was diagnosed with incurable bladder cancer, and today—wasted from chemotherapy and a shadow of the man he was—he is trying to finish a video-blog for his 5-year-old daughter Giovanna, so that when he's gone, she can watch it and remember him.
In a CNN piece covering a conversation with Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Charles, the faith of the latter is prominent. Charles minces no words in listing the mistakes he's made—and regretted—in his life, and glorifies Christ in the midst of his troubles.
Twice divorced, Charles states that divorce is an ugly thing. "I caused a lot of pain. I ripped apart lives," he says. "If I have a regret, that's it. I love all of them. With my illness, they've [his children] offered me a massive amount of forgiveness."
The CNN report says he reads the Bible often, and quotes Charles as saying that his wife brought him "back to the Lord" in the 1990s. The report also notes that doctors plan to give him morphine to ease the pain of his final days on earth.
As a Christian, it says, "he struggled with that concept. He wanted to make sure he wasn't committing suicide." But, assured by doctors that the pain-killer was only to keep him comfortable until the end.
Said Charles, at that point, "Peace came over me. I can't believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do."
As if the report (please follow the link below to read it in all it's fascinating, hardscrabble detail) wasn't poignant enough, Charles ended his conversation with Gupta by saying his ultimate message to his daughter Giovanna is that they will be together in Heaven forever, adding that he hopes his first interview when he gets to Heaven will be with Jesus.
His love and experience with the sport of boxing prompted him to conclude that when that day comes, "he'll dance around the ring, his head held high, a smile on his face."
"In the 12th round, somebody is going to raise my hand. I'm going to be victorious. I finally got my life right."
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/04/06/nick.charles.facing.death/index.html?hpt=C1# (Go to this link to see the CNN interview written below!)
Facing death, CNN sports anchor Nick Charles embraces life
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nick Charles, CNN original and first sports anchor in network's history, dying of cancer
In early January, he called off all chemotherapy and began making preparations for death
He was diagnosed with incurable bladder cancer in August 2009
He says people should "fasten onto the positives" of life
Editor's note: Dr. Sanjay Gupta also interviewed Nick Charles about the final fight of his life. That conversation will appear soon on "Sanjay Gupta, MD". This story was reported and written by CNN's Wayne Drash.
Santa Fe, New Mexico (CNN) -- Nick Charles looks into the camera, as he's done thousands of times before. Except he's not calling a boxing match for sports fans around the world.
He's talking to an audience of one: his 5-year-old daughter, Giovanna.
Over the last 40 years, Charles has covered every major sporting event, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl to the Kentucky Derby. He's covered some of the most classic boxing matches -- when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, when Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear, when Roberto Duran quit and told Sugar Ray Leonard, "No mas."
Yet this is the toughest taping he'll ever deliver, a message from beyond the grave. For his little girl.
As Charles stares into the lens, he projects the essence of a fighter -- tough, rugged, still smiling despite the bruises of battle. His wife of 13 years, Cory, holds the camera.
Gone is his patented mop of black hair. Twice voted the sexiest sportscaster in America, Charles has undergone rounds of chemotherapy that darkened the circles under his eyes and "make me look like I'm halfway in the grave."
On August 4, 2009, Charles was told he had incurable bladder cancer. He was given four to six months to live if he opted for no treatment. With treatment, he could expect about 20 months.
"I want the biggest guns you can fire at me," he told the doctors.
He's into his 21st month now. Each day, each hour, each breath is a gift.
He's fought this hard for Giovanna and Cory, to build a foundation for them after he's gone. He knows what it's like to long for a father's love. He only has a dozen or so memories of his own father.
"My little girl needs a good daddy more than anything right now," he says. "This is a gift from God where I need to build these memories for her, so that I'm not a blur."
Former CNN sports anchor Nick Charles shares breakfast with his daughter, Giovanna, who is 5.
The family has begun making preparations. They meet with a counselor regularly. When he was diagnosed, Charles told Giovanna he was sick -- that his hair would fall out.
This time last year, she looked at him with her big brown eyes and asked: "Are you going to die?"
"Everybody will sometime," he told her, "but we will always be together. But I'm not going anywhere today. I feel great. Now let's go out and play."
Weeks earlier, Charles and his wife sat down to tape the first in a series of birthday videos he's leaving for Giovanna. The camera rolls. Charles sings. In TV terms, he nails it.
Giovanna Charles, the girl daddy loves with all his heart
Because she's cute, because she's smart
Because she's sweet, because she's strong
Because she's so much fun!
'A gift from God'
Giovanna races around the family's spacious contemporary adobe home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Still wearing the princess shoes from her 5th birthday party the day before, she clicks across the tile floor, squeals of delight bouncing off the high ceilings.
"A gift from God," Charles calls her. "A blessing who came to me late in life."
He has three grown children from two previous marriages. His impending death has brought him closer to them -- including a 39-year-old son who sat with him during chemo sessions.
Don't worry. Daddy will always be in your heart.
--Giovanna Charles, 5, to her mother
His focus has been on his youngest girl, keeping a written journal since she was born, and recording the birthday videos after his diagnosis. He only recorded a handful; he was sobbing so much off-camera he could barely hold it together to go past her 11th birthday.
When Charles mentions Giovanna by name, he chokes up. Every few days, he walks into her room and looks in her closet, at the princess outfits and leotards. He pictures her prom dress hanging there years from now, knowing he'll never see her in it.
He breaks down and cries.
For Cory, the pain is unbearable, to witness the slow decline of the person you love. The woman Charles calls his rock, the love of his life, collapsed when she and her husband first learned of his illness. A producer for CNN International, she has continued to work because it keeps her focused.
Yet she's already begun a grieving process to prepare "for when he won't be here." She's in touch with bereavement groups and camps to help children who have lost a parent.
When Giovanna recently saw her mother crying, the girl consoled her. "Don't worry," she said, "Daddy will always be in your heart."
"You can never know what it will feel like when someone dies and is gone and how you will handle it," says Cory, 45. "From young widows, I know the feeling is profoundly sad, especially when somebody has such a presence as Nick."
Both are willing to speak so openly about their ordeal because, as Cory puts it, "too many Americans fear death."
Adds Charles, "I embrace it." He fights through fear.
Charles has always set goals in life: short-term, mid-term and long-term. He'd like to live until one more Easter, until his dream home is complete in early May, until his 65th birthday on June 30.
"I don't know how long I have." Just waking up to live one more day is blissful.
In January, he called off all treatment.
"I said, 'I can't take this chemo any more. It's going to kill me before the cancer. I want to feel everything in life while I can.' "
Charles talks with hs wife, Cory, and their daughter at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In the evenings, as the sun sets, Charles stares out the window and contemplates life. Looking back at him are the mountains that surround his home.
The pain arcs through his body. His toes feel frozen.
"God, if you're ready to take me," he says, "I'm in so much pain. Please, I'm ready to come home."
But Charles says he feels "the presence of Christ in the room ... saying, 'This isn't the time yet.'
"One time, he sat right with me on the bed."
The mountains are known as Sangre de Cristo, the blood of Christ. Charles focuses on three peaks. "Mommy, Daddy, Giovanna," he says. A sign they'll always be together, a sign of eternity.
He says a special prayer for Giovanna: "Don't let my daughter find me."
Lessons for a champ
Happy 7th birthday, my darling.
You're in 2nd grade now.
I bet you're playing the piano very well
Probably learning many languages
I just wish you the best life offers -- always.
Charles shuffles through his kitchen when his cell phone rings. He pulls the phone from his pocket. It's Mike Tyson.
"MIKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" he says.
He beams with enthusiasm.
The two men speak by phone three or four times a week. They talk about life lessons and philosophize about Aristotle. Tyson has young children, too. He asks about being a good parent.
I try not to dwell on the mistakes. You can't undo them.
--Nick Charles
On this day, they hastily arrange a visit.
"I want to see you again," Charles says. "You're a true friend, Mike, and I love you!"
The two reunited for the first time in years in early March. They sat in the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, the same place where Tyson took a chunk out of Holyfield's ear in 1997.
This time, Tyson wasn't dishing out punishment or acting in a rage. He was talking and listening, absorbing everything Charles had to tell him about life.
"I love you, brother," said Tyson. "I pray for you every day."
He told Charles to not give up, to keep hanging in strong -- that he needed him here longer.
Tyson clutched Charles' hands for 15 minutes. He refused to let go. When autograph seekers approached, Tyson flashed a bone-crushing look. They quickly scattered.
In Tyson's heyday, when he was the world's dominant boxer and one of sports' notorious bad boys, Charles would offer him advice. The reporter saw an inner-city kid who grew up without consequences, a young man with a lot of self-loathing, a guy with a lot of pain.
Charles knew the feeling. He grew up poor in inner-city Chicago, the son of a taxi driver who was mostly absent from his life. In grade school, during the frigid winters when his dad didn't pay the heat bills, Charles would curl up in bed with his mother and brother to stay warm.
He struggled in high school. He had no mentors. He was too busy working late-night jobs at produce docks in desolate Chicago neighborhoods. Once, his boss pointed to mounds of rat feces, threw lye all over the floor and handed the 17-year-old Charles a pair of gloves, rubber boots and a hoe.
"I'm inhaling this lye and I had to scrape all this stuff off. I said to myself, 'I need this job. I can't tell this guy to go take a flying leap,' " he says.
He had to fight for everything he got as a kid growing up.
--Jim Walton, CNN Worldwide president and Charles' field producer
"But I also said to myself, 'I'll never be trapped again in life. Never. Never.' That was a watershed, life-changing moment for me. It really drove me to the point where I had focus in my life."
Years later, when boxing promoter Don King first introduced Tyson to Charles in the 1980s, King shouted in his loquacious style, "He's one of us! He's a real guy! He came from nothing!"
At a time when Tyson trusted no one, he listened to Charles. "You can break me in two if you want," Charles would say before giving any advice, "but let me throw this out to you."
He told him about his own hard-scrabble life, of longing for a father's love, of the power of forgiveness, of digging deeper to better understand oneself.
Now, as Charles nears death, Tyson is like a sponge.
"He recalls conversations we had," says Charles. "He wants me to amplify it more. He wants to know what I've learned, because I've made mistakes in my life."
"I try not to dwell on the mistakes. You can't undo them. But I do try to fasten onto the positives, the things that drove me."
Charles says he got married too young, was too immature to know what a relationship entailed. He worked into the wee hours of the night. His job kept him on the road.
He first married at 22. He had a son, Jason, and a daughter, Melissa. He stayed married for eight years; Melissa was a toddler when he divorced.
His second marriage lasted about a dozen years. They adopted a baby girl from Korea. Katie, now 24, recently qualified for the Boston Marathon, he boasts.
Divorce is an ugly thing, and "innocent kids get hurt and lost in the middle.
"I caused a lot of pain. I ripped apart lives," he says. "If I have a regret, that's it. I love all of them."
He's recorded 10 hours of oral history -- essentially his life story -- for all his children to hear after he's gone.
"With my illness, they've offered me a massive amount of forgiveness."
Steak, scotch and dad
I can't even imagine 8 years old!
You're probably riding horses
You're probably standing up on the horse without a saddle.
That would be what I would expect from you
Because you're so athletic and strong and beautiful.
Charles longed for a relationship with his father, a machine-gunner in World War II who fought in ferocious battles in North Africa and Italy, earning a Bronze Star for his valor.
His father was rarely around to spend time with his two sons. He drove taxis at night. Other times, he just disappeared.
"He was a voracious reader," Charles says. "The few nights he was home, I used to sit with him and read. He'd have a pot of coffee on. It was the summer. We didn't have AC. It'd be 80 degrees outside.
Back when I was a kid, I remember thinking, 'Nick was the coolest guy ever!'
--Fred Hickman, Nick Charles' longtime TV partner
"I was maybe 15. I would just sit with him and read until 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning, so I could just be next to him."
He still remembers the books they read: Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury."
"He did the best he could with me. I've come to peace with him."
His father was there for him on the most important day of his career, when he auditioned for his first television job in Springfield, Illinois, in the fall of 1970. At the time, the young Charles drove a taxi. He'd graduated a few months earlier from Columbia College Chicago, where he studied communications and journalism.
Father and son drove the 200 miles to Springfield together, the son in a freshly pressed suit, his soon-to-be signature hair perfect. After a two-hour audition for WICS, Charles hopped back into the car: "Dad, I think I did pretty good."
The two dined on steak and scotch.
"It was the greatest day. I felt like we were two men who had bonded."
Two days later, he got the job. He took a pay cut to enter the television business: $130 a week as a sports anchor, compared to $200 driving a taxi.
Born Nicholas Charles Nickeas, he was told by his news director that his Greek name was too ethnic, to change it to something more "vanilla."
At age 24, Nick Charles was born. In two weeks, he went from driving a taxi to having his face on the sides of buses.
Less than two years later, Charles took a giant professional leap, replacing a beloved sports anchor in Baltimore. His boss in Springfield told him, "Nick, you're making a huge mistake."
Nick Charles' life tipsDon't get married early.
Travel the world.
Have a love of language and literature.
Learn to love your own company so you're not needy.
Ask yourself where do you want to be tomorrow? What about in 5 years, 10 years?
What do I require in a relationship? What am I capable of giving?
Enjoy little moments and turn them into ecstasy.
Fasten onto the positives of life.
Go to the doctor -- even for the most routine checkup.
Charles endured months of angry phone calls from viewers and hostility among staff for replacing a legend. "It cut deeply."
Yet he persevered. Soon, he was No. 1 in Baltimore -- and viewers loved him.
Before the world would come to know him, there would be stumbles. He was canned from a station in Washington in 1979. He thought about quitting TV altogether.
The man who People magazine would eventually rank among the most handsome in America went into radio. "I enjoyed the humility."
In January 1980, his life changed forever. He got a call about a 24-hour news network being formed in Atlanta by Ted Turner.
Charles became the first sports anchor in CNN history. And it's at CNN where he shined.
In his prime, he teamed up with Fred Hickman on "Sports Tonight." The two had chemistry, charisma and dynamism -- a duo of boundless energy. They beat ESPN in ratings when both upstart networks were battling for every viewer.
Hickman, who grew up in Springfield, had long been a fan of Charles. "Back when I was a kid," Hickman says, "I remember thinking, 'Nick was the coolest guy ever!'
"We just clicked from the very beginning," Hickman says. "In television, you always have personality conflicts. Nick and I never had one. Nick and I have always had a tremendous relationship."
Fred Hickman teamed with Charles on "Sports Tonight." The two had chemistry and beat ESPN in the ratings.
Viewers tuned in every night to catch the latest sports news. Topps put Charles' million-dollar smile on a bubble gum card -- rare for a TV personality.
Women swooned. In airports, it was hard to go unnoticed. Fans would say: "I love you, Nick Charles! And I hate that guy Chris Berman on ESPN!"
The black-maned, olive-skinned beauty always had a line for them. "Please don't use that word -- hate. Berman is a friend."
The feelings were mutual. "We were competitors but we never felt that way," says Berman. "I have nothing but good things to say about Nick Charles -- nothing but admiration -- and I'd like him to know that."
Charles' field producer in those early days was Jim Walton, now president of CNN Worldwide. He and Charles traveled the globe together, eating at cheap food joints and working long hours.
The two were in Tokyo in 1990 when Tyson faced a weak opponent named Buster Douglas. They didn't plan to do many stories. Everyone in press row picked the undefeated world champ to win in the first round.
Charles had gone to Tyson's room the night before the fight. He saw a man who wasn't taking Douglas seriously. Tyson wanted to get the match over and fly back to the States.
But the unthinkable happened. Douglas knocked out Tyson in the 10th round.
"We scrambled," says Walton.
Always a lover of literature, Charles told viewers that Douglas "threw the book at him and it made for bad reading," one of his most famous lines.
"It speaks to the uncertainty," Charles now says of the match, "that anybody's cloak of invincibility can be ripped away."
Charles left CNN in 2001 when the network dropped sports. To this day, he and Hickman remain one of the longest anchor duos paired together in television. From CNN, Charles moved to Showtime to cover boxing.
Walton says Charles had always been drawn to the sport because "he had to fight for everything he got as a kid growing up."
It's that trait that's helping Charles in his current battle.
"He's handled this like a heavyweight champ," says Hickman. "If I can do as well living the rest of my life as he is living out the rest of his, then I will consider it a success."
Charles cries when he talks about the strength of boxers. He knows the sport is barbaric; he readily admits that. Yet when he looks at the ring, he sees young men like him from the inner city.
Charles, who boxed as a teen, says his upbringing "gave me a love of people who want to make it so bad."
"You're going to get hit. You have to take pain to get it," he says. "You have to fight through fear."
On that day in August 2009, when he was first given a death sentence, he promised himself: "There's no way I'm going to wimp out on this."
'Peace came over me'
Oh, happy 9th birthday.
And I hope you're listening to Mommy all the time
And I hope you're listening to music you love,
Maybe traveling to wonderful places.
It's just such a beautiful world
And so many glorious places to explore and just be captivated by.
Charles walks with a limp, part of the side effects of chemo. His famous hair is now gray, sparse and closely cropped.
He's taken phone calls from Bob Costas, Willard Scott and countless other television stars and athletes. He likes it even more when he hears from interns, cameramen, producers and fans -- the blue-collar people who always rooted for him.
Over the last 40 years, Charles has covered every major sporting event, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl.
Not many people, he says, are fortunate enough to attend their own memorial service. A slow death allows that. His brother died of a sudden heart attack in 1988 at age 43. His father died in 1975, his mother in 2003. He's the last of his immediate family.
He reads the Bible often. He sprinkles "God bless you" in his conversations. He says his wife "brought me back to the Lord" in the 1990s.
He's spent these final weeks with those he loves most. He's picked the music for his memorial service -- Edward Elgar's Sospiri op. 70, with the cello played by Sol Gabetta.
"It lifts my spirits."
Last month, he signed off on television for what is likely the last time after calling a featherweight fight on HBO. "Why am I doing this?" he told viewers. "To inspire others to do what they love."
"I had a smile on my face all night," he says now. "I was on fire!"
He's talked with counselors and hospice workers about his final week. It will go something like this: He'll lose his appetite first. After three days, he'll be unable to swallow and feel like he's drowning. His liver will stop functioning and other organs will follow. The cancer will take over completely.
He'll be given morphine to ease the pain. As a Christian, he struggled with that concept. He wanted to make sure he wasn't committing suicide.
"We're not pulling the plug on you early," he was told. "We're just keeping you comfortable until the end."
With those words, he says, "Peace came over me."
"I can't believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do."
He hopes his final words will be to that beautiful girl, Giovanna: "I'm going to heaven to prepare a place for you and ... we're going to be together forever."
Charles has traveled to 70 countries; he has one journey left. He hopes his first interview when he gets there will be with Jesus, followed by a round-table discussion with Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I'd ask them: What motivated them? What sparked them?"
When that day comes, he says, he'll dance around the ring, his head held high, a smile on his face. "In the 12th round, somebody is going to raise my hand. I'm going to be victorious.
"I finally got my life right."
If you're inspired by this story, Nick Charles and his family would be honored if you made a donation to help stop child trafficking and abuse, increase access to education and allow children to embrace life. Working with the humanitarian organization World Vision and the TEACH NOW: Preventing Child Labor in the Philippines project, the family welcomes support here: www.worldvision.org/EmbraceLife.
RIP, Nick Charles
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/deaconsbench/2011/06/rip-nick-charles/
June 26, 2011 by Deacon Greg Kandra 2 Comments
The trailblazing CNN sports anchor died yesterday after a long bout with cancer — just short of one of his personal goals, to see his 65th birthday. He would have been 65 on June 30.
This spring, he spoke with CNN about his life and his last days — and the importance of his rediscovered faith.
From the Christian Post:
While too many Americans fear death, Charles admitted that he embraces it.
Hoping that his final words to his daughter will be, “I’m going to heaven to prepare a place for you and we’re going to be together forever,” the heralded anchor prays that his daughter won’t be the one to find him when he passes.
Reading the Bible often, Charles remains steadfast in his faith, a faith his wife helped rekindle in the 1990s. She “brought me back to the Lord,” he told [CNN Medical Reporter Dr. Sanjay] Gupta.
During moments of pain, he shared that Christ has always been there beside him. At one point, Charles mentioned, Christ sat with him on his bed.
“I’m ready to come home,” he remembered praying. But he heard Christ telling him, “This is not the time yet.”
Counselors and hospice workers have informed him about what it will be like in his final days. To ease his pain, he’ll be given morphine.
Struggling with that concept as a Christian, Charles wanted to make sure he was not committing suicide. Saying they were not pulling the plug on him early, his care workers ensured that they were just keeping him comfortable until the end.
Charles, reassured, disclosed to Gupta that peace came over him then.
“I can’t believe I feel so good about the last week of my life, but I do … I finally got my life right.”
The sports legend wants his next interview to be with Jesus, followed by a discussion with Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
“When that day comes, [I’ll] dance around the ring, [my] head held high, a smile on [my] face. In the 12th round, somebody is going to raise my hand. I’m going to be victorious.”
