Posts Tagged ‘Love’

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV 1984).

He was there to check his iron levels, a bit younger than I with a black, bushy beard. I asked him about the deep scratches on his arms.
“That’s from my dog,” he said.
“What kind of dog do you have?”
“A pit bull,” he said.
“I’d get another kind of dog,” I said, touching the scars on his arms.
“I had two dogs,” he continued.  “One of them gave his life for me. I was walking through the woods and nearly stepped on a copperhead. He would’ve struck me, but my blue heeler jumped out and took the bite right in his neck. My pit bull then attacked the snake, took a strike in the face, but killed the snake.”
“What happened to your heeler?”
“He disappeared in the woods for two days. I found him, but he died five days later. That dog died for me.”

Thad Williams underwent the first bone marrow transplant in Memphis when we treated him for his Burkitt’s lymphoma years ago. He and his wife Cathy became dear friends, bound together by their struggle and by our mutual love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Thad survived the transplant and lived more than 15 additional years before God called him home. Today, my wife and I attended Cathy’s last concert as band director in her city’s high school, a school system she served for 37 years. It was a celebration of Cathy’s life. Many speakers described her accomplishments and lauded her with words like: kindness, competence, mentor, passion and determination—words that well describe our Lord when He walked the earth. With such praise surrounding her, Cathy conducted her final concert as band director, ending with a magnificent arrangement of “God of Our Fathers.”

We were in their country, not ours. The hotel was bustling with students, local Christian doctors, American physicians, dentists and nurses—rapid movement in all directions, a controlled chaos shepherding hundreds toward a life with Jesus. Randy, an American dentist, was moving through the crowds when he noticed one of the students seemed distressed. She was one who had been most outspoken against the gospel. Randy spoke to her and discovered her grandfather was very ill. He placed his arm around the girl and asked if he might pray for her. There on the stairs of the busy hotel, Randy sat with his arm around the student and prayed.