Friday, June 6, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Shurrel
When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.
Years ago, when I was not yet 60, I spent parts of nearly every day in the basement circulation offices of the News Gazette in Champaign. It was a nice basement – this fully furnished floor beneath the three story lobby lined with marble, plaques and statues The lobby echoed into a circular staircase which went up and up, I’m not sure where.
We circulation folks climbed a few stairs to the back door, which a code unlocked so we could walk down more stairs through the newspaper’s well-appointed and cozy break room to our offices. To get up to the lobby we had to walk through the city room. Kind of exciting, actually.
I worked there 15 years. Driving into the parking lot on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I heard a news headline on WDWS radio about a plane crashing into a skyscraper in New York City. Climbing the stairs, decoding the back door, walking down into the basement, I walked into a circulation department on double alert. We were putting out an extra for the first time in decades, and all of us got copies of that paper to distribute to stores and news racks hours before the evening paper would be ready for our carriers and their customers.
I “managed” about 80 kid carriers, who more or less reliably picked up their bundles after school, rolled and wrapped the papers, and either walked or biked around their neighborhoods with 30 or 40 or even 50 papers in their canvas bags. Chris, Marc, and Andi all had paper routes. And I have to say, on 9/11, we felt like our job was more important than ever. It mattered. The excitement of sharing the news from New York City, then soon after from the rest of the world, took my breath away.
As the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him. Bless the Lord, O my soul, bless his holy name.
A few days later, because I was a pastor, our HR director Betty asked me to lead a prayer service. Many folks were there, and we read the 23rd psalm together. A few of us said a few words, and prayed. We shared shock, grief and patriotic feelings much more than usual. We were all thinking about the same thing, this unprecedented disaster, and we felt a kinship that usually rests under the surface of our lives.
My friend Shurrel has worked at the News Gazette for thirty-five years. And counting. Although the paper is smaller, it’s still printed five days a week. Shurrel manages the distribution side of things, which means she works from 1 am till 10 am, because these days the paper comes out in the morning.
Shurrel came up and greeted me during lunch yesterday at the Apple Dumplin’ restaurant. It had been awhile. I left when I was 59, and now I’m 75!
But I remembered how Shurrel, with all her outstanding energy, sat downstairs at her computer station taking customer service calls for hour after hour, even when she had a migraine. Often she was in pain, and one day I heard her talking about it. At our Vineyard church we were learning how to pray for people right now, out loud when they needed prayer –  and Shurrel needed prayer. I rubbed her back and put my hand on her head and prayed, and in a few minutes she announced to the whole office (10-15 people all day and half the night), “I’m healed!”
Or something like that. She was happy, laughing, and I felt so good. Margaret often talks about my “healing hands,” and that day Shurrel did too. Many more times over the years we shared that experience; it became something we both needed and appreciated.
Seeing Shurrel yesterday brought back many memories, especially the prayers we shared. Back then, and today too, I realized that there was more to that job at the News Gazette than keeping 80 kids in line.
For years our family saved front pages of important dates and events, especially our five birthdays. The Illini Union, first published in 1852, gradually became the News Gazette by 1919, and my mom (born in 1922) and I both reveled in a News Gazette-published book of significant front page facsimiles from its 150 years, stories of births, deaths, war and peace, financial disasters … the atomic bomb. And the planes that crashed and burned the World Trade Center on September 11.
No headlines for the prayers Shurrel and I prayed. But they matter as much as anything.
The Holy Spirit will teach you everything and remind you of all I told you.
 (Acts 25, Psalm 103, John 14, John 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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