My heart was deeply touched by an Email I received which purportedly was telling a true story, a story about a little boy whose older sister had a rare and fatal blood disease. The little boy had developed in his blood the antibodies that gave him immunity, but unfortunately his older sister had not. The doctors explained to him that if he did not give his blood to his sister, she would die. Her little brother sat quietly for several minutes. He thought long and hard before finally agreeing to the blood transfusion. “I’m ready ”, he told the doctors. “You can start today.”
Apparently someone had not fully explained everything to the little boy, because he asked one more question just as they started the transfusion. Looking up at the nurse with some sadness in his eyes, the question came from his lips: “Will I start to die right now?”
I have heard people talk spiritual talk and use a lot of religious language, and frankly it doesn’t impress me any more. Overly religious, “churchy” sermons usually bore me. But when I come face to face with real, unpretentious, self-sacrificing LOVE, such as this little boy had, I am flabbergasted! I must stop and take a breath and wipe away a tear. I know that I have been, for just a moment, exposed to something that is beyond normal human living—something that is divine.
A doctor named Richard Selzer writes of a surgery he performed to remove a tumor from the face of a young lady. In the surgery it was necessary that he clip a nerve, leaving her mouth grotesquely twisted. In his book he describes the scene in the hospital room. The lady’s husband is standing to the side. She asks the doctor, “Will my mouth always be like this?” The doctor replies, “Yes, because the nerve was cut.” The doctor then stands amazed as her husband smiles at her and says, “I like it- it’s kind of cute.”
Consider Selzer’s next words: “All at once I know who he is. I understand and lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends over to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”
I believe that in spite of how jaded we may become, no matter how many phonies we may meet along the way, and regardless of how much disappointment and disillusionment we may experience, we are still “blown away” when we encounter this kind of love.
When we say “love”, we may mean anything from lust to pleasure to mild affection. I “love” good music, a really funny joke, old cars, the sunrise, Cajun food, great books, sweet faithful dogs, and ice cream.
The ancient Greeks had different words for various kinds of love. One meant a fondness for someone. Another meant a sense of belonging. Another meant sexual attraction. But the most powerful word was “agape” (pronounced “ah –gah- pay”). It is the kind of love that leaves us speechless because it is beyond all normal expectations, totally undeserved, without condition, unlimited in scope, unending in duration, and completely selfless.
Agape love is described as “longsuffering and kind, without envy or boastfulness, without arrogance or rudeness, never selfish, never hot-tempered, and never taking into account a wrong suffered.” It overlooks the faults of others, always hopes for the best, encourages, trusts, forgives, endures, and never gives up.
I once knew a man who was an unfaithful husband of a remarkably loving wife. Some well-meaning friends decided to tell her what her husband was really like. They met with her and told her what everyone else seemed to know. The lady, upon hearing this, said, “I’m sorry, but you just don’t know my husband. He loves me, and he would never do this! You have made a terrible mistake. It must be someone else. My husband is a good man. I know him. He would NEVER do anything like that!”
When the man heard what his wife had said, it broke his heart. He couldn’t continue to betray such trust and respect. Looking in the mirror, he vowed to become the kind of man his wife believed him to be.
True love is not “feelings”, but action! We may be a long way from being as loving as the three “heroes” of these stories. But they were just ordinary people who cared more for someone else than they did for themselves. Scripture says that it all starts with simple kindness.
Glen Campbell told it pretty well when he sang, “If you’ll try a little kindness, then you’ll overlook the blindness of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets!”
Friends, we can all do that. Let’s start now.
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