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The Little Engine That Almost Didn't
CHICAGO, IL (December 26, 2002) - (Editor's note: This story, originally published in the Freeport
(Illinois) Journal-Standard newspaper last May, is offered as a
post-Christmas story of God's gift of grace in the form of a toy. The tale
involves two Covenanters - Mark Westlind, professor of World Mission at
North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, and Dale Reed, a
parishioner at Grace Covenant Church in Chicago and the son of longtime
missionaries Jerry and Nancy Reed.
By Olga Gize Carlile
This is the story about the little engine that
could and would re-couple with the rest of the train . . .
Our train story starts 33 years ago when Mark Westlind - then about 8 years
of age - went with his missionary parents to the Evangelical Covenant
Church in Tulcan, Ecuador, a small town on the border between Ecuador and
Colombia.
Due to health reasons, the Westlinds - mom and pop and the kids - had to
return suddenly to the United States and travel being what it was back
then, they could take little more than what they could carry.
Young Mark had a Marklin HO gauge model train set. He pleaded with his dad
to allow him to take a couple of train cars. He was told this would not be
possible. "Only the engine," his parents informed him.
In the intervening years, he often thought of that train set and went on to
actually work as an engineer in the Southwestern part of the United States
for a time.
The Reed family - Jerry and Nancy and children - arrived sometime after the
Westlinds had left and discovered items which had been left behind. Dale
Reed, than a kid of 4 or 5 years of age, ended up receiving pieces of that
train set as birthday presents over the years with other pieces and cars
added to the set over time. He learned a lot about circuits and electricity
in playing with that set.
Some years he would set it up around the Christmas tree. Following graduate
school, he directed an inner-city technology program and used the train set
as the basis for designing computer circuits to control a train-switching
yard. Later on, the train set languished in his closet.
Years later, when Dale's brother, Rob, was being ordained as a missionary
in the Evangelical Covenant Church, his dad introduced him to Mark
Westlind. In the conversation that followed, Mark told about his family's
hurried departure from Ecuador and mentioned that Marklin HO gauge model
train engine and what it meant to him.
Dale, who had acquired the pieces of that train set over the years, asked
Mark, "Do you want it?" Mark was surprised: "Are you serious?" he asked.
Dale invited him to stop by. Mark was deeply touched to get back the train
set that he thought he would never see again, a train set that had meant so
much to him growing up.
"I count myself fortunate to have been able to give it to him, for though
the train set was a nice toy for me, to him it was a treasure," Dale
reflected. "To be used to bless others is itself a blessing. To me the
story showed how God can give us the deep desires of our heart, even
separated by time and space."
And so the parts were coupled together again after all those years and
became a train set once more. And the little engine that could, did.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
