I found great inspiration in hearing tales of the Dutch Ten Boom family who hid and smuggled out hundreds of Jews and others from the Nazi occupied Netherlands. It's a beautiful story. My breath catches a little, every time I think of them.
And then another true story that nearly brings me to tears is the martyrdom of Dirk Willems. I believe he lived during the 16th century. He had become an Anabaptist, I think a Waldensian, but I may be wrong.
He had escaped from his prison cell and fled into the winter night. The jailer was right on his heels. Dirk Willems ran across a frozen pond, but the jailer fell through the ice.
Dirk heard the jailer cry out, and so turned back and pulled the jailer out of the freezing water, tended to him, and helped him get back to town.
The jailer was so moved by this act of love, that he forgave Dirk Willems. But the authorities still insisted on punishing him, and so he was martyred. I don't want to talk about how. But the important thing is that in the darkest of times, he showed brotherly love. Mercy. Dirk could have escaped, and his pursuer would have never had a chance to catch him. But he turned back, and thought of the greater need of the other. Giving someone else the chance at life, even though he knows his will be shortened.
It's beautiful.
And then there are the modern day food missionaries, programs like "Love A Child", that pulls families and orphaned children out of the garbage dumps of Haiti, and builds for them homes, schools, and gives them nutritious food, hope, education, The Gospel, and a chance to be a kid, playing and not worrying about tomorrow.
I shed little tears every time I see documentaries where church groups dig wells in poor communities, worldwide. As soon as the water shoots up out of the aquifer, I cry. I grew up without running water for a long bit of my childhood. My grandparents had water, but we didn't. The best we had was a garden hose under the kitchen sink, for dishes or sponge baths.
I know what it's like not to have a bathtub, or a toilet. To take sponge baths, and ration out the bottled drinking water from town. To only have one true tub bath a week, and that was after everyone else had used the same water and washcloth.
A well is hope. A well is home. A well is life and health. A well means lasting community.
Children can attend school because they don't have to carry water long distances anymore. And they'll do better in school, because the deep well water is free of parasites.
A well brings community uplift, because those educated children will bring higher incomes to their community, better health, better maternal outcomes, etc.
Stuff like that, Love In Action Through Service, that's what made me accept Christ. I saw there were Christians in my life, and a few of them were so nice to me. And they seemed so happy, calm, unaffected by the wind and rain of life. So ready to give of anything to help someone else.
That's what made me a Christ follower. I could see Jesus in their eyes, their hands, their words. I want to be like them someday.
