Fifteen Whooping Cranes

Whooping cranes are the tallest birds in North America, and there were once more than 10,000 of them. Shooting and the loss of prairie habitat to farming nearly wiped them out. By 1941 there were only 15 whooping cranes left in the wild, wintering at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas. Every whooping crane alive today comes from that tiny flock. People in the United States and Canada worked together through strict legal protection, habitat preservation, and captive breeding. Slowly the numbers have climbed. When things look almost hopeless, remember those 15 cranes. God can build a future from a very small remnant when His people are faithful to do their part.

Beethoven Couldn’t Hear the Applause

On May 7, 1824, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony premiered in Vienna. Beethoven stood onstage, but he was so deaf that the conductor told the orchestra and choir to ignore Beethoven’s beat and watch him instead. The audience erupted in applause, so much that it interrupted the music. Beethoven, absorbed in his score, could not hear it. Singer Caroline Unger turned him around so he could see the crowd celebrating. Accounts differ on whether this happened after the scherzo or at the very end. Either way, the man who wrote the Ode to Joy had to be turned to see the joy. Sometimes we need a friend to turn us around to see what God is doing.

Thousands Came to Cane Ridge

Barton W. Stone was the ordained minister at the Cane Ridge meeting house in Kentucky. In the summer of 1800 he traveled to Logan County to attend a revival led by James McGready. Back home he held a few preparatory meetings and then announced one for August 6, 1801. Nobody expected what happened. The crowd was estimated at anywhere from 10,000 to 25,000 people, at a time when Lexington, Kentucky’s largest city, had about 2,000. Rows of wagons and makeshift tents filled the clearing while preachers spoke from platforms and even fallen trees. Stone later broke with the Presbyterians, and his followers called themselves simply Christians. Never underestimate what God can do with people hungry for Him.

A Church Body That Chose to Die

On June 28, 1804, at Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Kentucky, Barton W. Stone and five other Presbyterian ministers signed one of the strangest documents in church history. They called it the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. Their own organization was the one dying. They wrote, “We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.” They gave up the title “Reverend” and willed that people take the Bible as the only sure guide to heaven. The witnesses said it “died a voluntary and happy death.” Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is let your own name fade so Christ’s body can be one.

Stone and Smith Shook Hands

On Saturday, January 1, 1832, two groups of believers met at the Hill Street church in Lexington, Kentucky: the Christians who followed Barton W. Stone and the reformers associated with Alexander Campbell. “Raccoon” John Smith spoke first. He said, “Let us, then, my brethren, be no longer Campbellites, or Stoneites, New Lights or Old Lights,” but come “to the Bible, and to the Bible alone.” He reminded them there may be ten thousand opinions but only one faith, so Christians must be one in faith, not in opinion. Stone answered that he had no objection, and said, “I am willing to give him, now and here, my hand.” Their handshake became famous. Unity often starts with one hand reaching out.