Little Stuffed Bear

It’s a Saturday morning here in Southern Pines, N.C., and I’m typing this article while sitting in my workroom.

At the table in our nearby kitchen sit three ladies: my wife, Carol; Barbra Eschmann; and Linda Martin. Barb and Linda go to Grace Church in Southern Pines, the church Carol and I attend. Carol and Barb are retired, and Linda works part-time as a secretary at our church.

Carol is conducting an “envelope hugs” workshop, giving the ladies ideas about reaching out with the love of Christ to people through writing letters and cards. Carol calls the things she sends through the U.S. Mail “Envelope Hugs.”

Carol is sharing quotes and giving Barb and Linda some samples from her stash of stationery. She’s encouraging the ladies to write to friends and to strangers they may meet, hear about or read about. She’s telling them about people she’s written to and recounting stories about folk who responded to her outreach. She’s letting them know everyone won’t respond, and that they should not let that discourage them. The idea is to reach out, to sort of “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it (it will return) after many days” (Ecclesiastes 11:1). “The Message Bible” interprets that verse as “Be generous: Invest in acts of charity. Charity yields high returns.”

A few minutes ago, I walked to the kitchen, poured some diet lemonade and snatched a cookie from those Carol bought for the ladies. I saw Barb holding my “teddy bear.” Carol had shown it to the ladies and told them about its background. The little “play purty,” as my Grandmother Lillian (“Ma Crain”) called such things, isn’t really a teddy bear. He’s only five inches tall, including his ears, and he’s flat, with just enough stuffing to make him three-dimensional. He’s made of teal-colored cloth, and stitchery indicates his eyes, nose and mouth. He’s stained and soiled, but he’s still smiling.

I often rode as a child with my paternal grandparents on their Saturday “milk and butter” delivery route into Greenville, S.C. Pa, who worked as a carpenter, and Ma, who never worked at a “public job,” owned one cow at a time and sold fresh milk and butter to about five or six customers in the “big city.” Two elderly sisters on our route lived together in a small white house. They gave me the little stuffed bear when I was around five years old. He somehow survived 58 years, and Carol keeps him sitting in a tiny rocking chair in our kitchen. I can still “see” the two elderly ladies who gave me that bear.

Barb asked to borrow my bear so she could make a pattern. She said she wants to cut, sew and stuff some bears to send through the mail. She said he’s flat enough to send in an envelope. Carol and Linda thought that was a great idea.

Strange, I thought, how two gray-haired ladies who usually wore their hair in buns and were often attired in simple print dresses could reach down through the years with a little act of kindness. Perhaps the story may be told this way: Two elderly ladies give a small stuffed bear to a boy who visits them with his grandparents. The boy plays with the bear and often, throughout his lifetime, remembers the ladies and their smiles. During the boy’s autumn years, a white-haired lady visits his home to hear his wife talk about sending letters of encouragement. The visiting lady sees the little bear and decides to make a pattern of him, so she can send bears to brighten lives.

Strange, how kindness has a way of multiplying. Strange, that concept of “casting your bread upon the waters.”

One of my favorite Bible verses is “He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions” (Psalm 107:20). I think of that verse when I see letters Carol sends. She often lays her letters and cards in a blue chair in our living room, and I take them to our mailbox before I leave for work. God sent Jesus, the Word made flesh, to heal us from the penalty of sin, and as we use our words to present Jesus’ words, we become agents of healing, too. We become, in the words of an old song, “His hands extended.”

It’s Saturday morning, and Carol, Barbra and Linda are having a great time talking about ways to reach out to people through “envelope hugs.” They seem ready to “cast their bread upon the waters” – and Barb may even cast a few stuffed bears upon those “waters.”