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This year on my birthday the Lord gave me a wonderful gift, a Birthday Blessing. Someone found me on Facebook. Back in the early 1980s for a brief time (I don’t even remember how long) my wife and I took in a teenage boy in our parish. One day he just up and left. We heard later that he had joined the navy. That was it; until this year when I received a Facebook friend request from B…..
Father Geoff,
How ironic that I should find you on your birthday! Happy Birthday! So many years have passed since I saw you last and I hope my letter makes your birthday a little more enjoyable.
On occasion I think about the little town of Webster and how during a pivotal and influential point in my life, you pulled me close and kept me on the right path. Wow, how does one express enough gratitude! You made a profound impact on my life in so many ways. My father taught me how to survive; you taught me how a man should live and love! For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! You will be happy to know that I turned out to be a pretty good man, citizen and father of three wonderful sons. I have served over twenty two years in the US Navy and US Air Force National Guard. I own my own small but successful electronic security business….. I am very happy with my life.
It was very rewarding to receive such an email. It adds confidence to the notion that our little acts of kindness and love are not futile. They can change lives for the better and make such a ripple of out ward flowing love as to be beyond our knowledge.
In KAIROS, the prison ministry for which I volunteer, we pile up a multitude of small tokens of God’s love and watch hardened hearts soften, walls of hurt crumble, and lost lives welcomed into the family of God. One of these tokens is in the form of letters. People in prison receive little if any mail. Many go for months, years, even decades without contact of family or friends. On a KAIROS weekend the participants receive forty or fifty letters from members of the team. Moreover, they get to open them without the prison opening them first. That in itself is a huge gift of love. To give you an idea of how powerful this act of love is, I will share the testimony of one participant.
He said, “I’ve only cried twice in my life. The first time was twenty-five years ago, when I received my sentence and I died that day. The second was yesterday when I read all those letters and I knew I could do the rest of my time alive.”
We also have what we call “Children’s Agape,” these symbols of God’s love are what you might call Refrigerator Art. A simple drawing by a 6 year old can bring a hardened criminal to his knees. One time a participant received a self portrait of a little girl in a purple dress. Written across the top it said, “God loves you and so do I.” It was signed with the girl’s age and first name. It was the same name as this resident’s victim and the dress was the same color and style that she had worn. Love in KAIROS (God’s time) conquered the dark side in this man’s life.
Love is none other than the power of life over death.
Sometimes evil and hatred seems more powerful than love. Like the “dark side of the force,” in the Star Wars movies it kills and destroys with ease. However, the dark side cannot create. My favorite image of this truth is in a song from 1964 by Melvina Reynolds called God Bless the Grass. The first stanza is:
God bless the grass that grows thru the crack.
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back.
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do,
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru,
And God bless the grass.
I see this creative act of God’s love played out in the asphalt of my driveway every time I mow the lawn. Life beats Round Up hands down all the time.
The Rest of the Story
My all time favorite story of the rippling effect of the power of small acts of love and kindness was told on Paul Harvey’s radio show The Rest of the Story. There was a brother and sister in the late 1800s who were orphaned when a fire burned their home and killed their parents. A short time later the boy died of influenza. All this trauma caused little Ann to lose her mind. In those days orphanages had little skill in caring for mental illness. Ann was locked in the basement.
There was a woman at the orphanage whose job it was to take Ann her food. She would simply push a plate under the door of the little girl’s room. However, things were to change. Dwight L. Moody, the Billy Graham of his day, came to town. Ann’s keeper went to hear him speak. The message of his sermon was just this: the power of God’s love in the deeds of love of His people. He urged the congregation to go home and do something loving for others.
The next time this woman brought Ann her food she also brought her Bible. It became her custom to take time; sit outside Ann’s door and read aloud. In time little Ann regained her mind. She grew up and became a teacher. Her name was Ann Sullivan, the teacher of Helen Keller. That is The Rest of the Story. No wonder Helen Keller would later say, “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” ( http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/helen_keller.html)
Philemon
Let us also have a good Biblical example of the impact of love from the Bible. This is a ‘rest of the story” kind of tale. I am speaking of the little “book” of the Bible, Paul’s letter to Philemon. Philemon was the leader of one of the churches Paul had started in Greece. He had a slave by the name of Onesimus who ran away and came to where Paul was being held prisoner in Rome. Paul decides that Onesimus should return to his owner. However, in the meantime, Onesimus has become a Christian. Paul pours all his powers of persuasion into the letter as he urges Philemon to receive Onesimus, not as a runaway slave, but as a brother in Christ. At one point Paul points out that the name Onesimus means “useless.” He continues that he who was useless has now become useful for the Kingdom of God. Here is the “rest of the story.”
Legend has it that Onesimus later became a bishop of the church. Furthermore it was he who first collected the letters of Paul so that they might become what they are for us today, a major portion of the New Testament. The power of God’s love for Onesimus, the power of Paul’s love poured out to Philemon, the power of God’s love in the reconciliation between owner and slave, all are the reason we have much of the Bible to inspire us today.
Love Links
When my late wife was seriously ill we asked friends and their friends to send us tokens of their love and prayers. We asked them to send us hearts and tells us when in the day they would be praying for us. I took a cheap battery operated wall clock and put a piece of posterboard behind the hands. We placed these hearts around the face at the times when people were praying.
One of these was a simple plastic heart no bigger than an inch tall and maybe a half inch at its widest point. It was a simple act of love that still has power to encourage me thirty years later. This little heart started out as part of a valentine card that Norm sent to his wife many years before when he was in Europe during WWII. They sacrificed that token of their love to show how much they cared for my wife. I know it helped her live twenty six years longer than the doctor’s projection of only three.
Most of the parables of Jesus work under the principle of “How much more.” If this is true of seeds in the ground, how much more is it true in the Kingdom of heaven? If a Father will love this much, how much more will your heavenly father love? If a simple piece of children’s refrigerator art can melt the heart of a hardened criminal think what else is possible. If a few weeks living with the pastor can help a teenager “get a life” think what your act of love could do for someone in need. If you have been useless in the Kingdom of heaven think who might be an Ann Sullivan in your life.