The Unexpected Adventure: Care

Day 8 Adventure ~ Putting Love into Action
LEE STROBEL

Leslie and I burst into tears — and I mean that literally: we erupted into sobs when the grim-faced doctors broke the news to us at Leslie’s bedside. There was something terribly wrong with our newborn daughter.
Alison was being rushed into the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. The doctors needed our signatures on legal documents to authorize emergency tests. We were told to prepare for the worst. We were devastated and gripped by fear. Why her? Why us? It was the worst nightmare of every parent.

Alison’s sudden illness shocked us because everything had seemed fine the first day of her life. Although Leslie’s labor had been unusually long, the birth itself was uneventful and the baby seemed to be healthy, alert, and content.

Like all new parents, Leslie and I got caught up in the excitement and euphoria of the long-anticipated event. I remember calling relatives from the recovery room. “You know how most newborn babies are all wrinkled and ugly?” I would say. “Well, Alison’s not like that. She’s absolutely beautiful!” (Now when I look at old photos of Alison moments after she was born, she looks just like any other infant who had just struggled through birth. But such are the eyes of a new father.)

Then, the following day, Leslie and I were waiting for the nurses to bring Alison for her one o’clock feeding. But they didn’t come. We were starting to get impatient. Finally, just before I was going to find out what was holding them up, there was a knock at the door. In came a contingent of doctors bearing the terrible news that made our hearts jump into our throats.

The next several days were a stomach-churning blur. It was agonizing to see our firstborn child hooked up to machines and monitors, with an intravenous needle in her ankle. What’s worse, we weren’t Chris-tians at the time — and without God, there was really nowhere to turn.

In the midst of that horror, I was walking in despair down the hospital corridor when a telephone on the wall rang. A nurse picked it up and then looked around. “It’s for you,” she said.

On the line was David, a man I had known years earlier but hadn’t seen in a long time. At first I was puzzled why he would be calling me, especially there. The truth is that in the course of interacting with David in the past, I had lied to him, misled him, made fun of him, broken promises to him, and ruthlessly criticized his church and everything it stood for. But he was a committed Christian, and that’s why he was on the phone that day.

“I heard what’s going on with your little girl,” David said, his voice laden with concern. “What can I do for you? Can I come down there and be with you for a while? Would you like to talk? Can I bring you anything? Can I run some errands for you? Lee, just give the word and I’ll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’ll be praying for your daughter, and so will my friends at church.”

I was incredulous! I couldn’t believe he had bothered to track me down and was willing to drop everything, take time off from work, and drive sixty miles just to help me. Or that he and some strangers in a church were willing to get on their knees and plead to their God for the recovery of a child they had never met — the offspring of an avowed atheist, no less. There’s no way in the world that I deserved that.

I thanked David, although I didn’t take him up on his offer. Then after ten tense days, Alison simply recovered from her mysterious illness. The doctors didn’t know what to make of it and, by God’s grace, to this day she has never exhibited any lingering effects from it.

Since then Leslie and I have tried to forget the trauma that we went through when Alison was hospitalized. Yet today, more than three decades later, I could take you back to the precise spot where I received that call from Dave. That’s how deeply it’s seared into my memory. His unselfish willingness to serve us was one more influence in my own journey toward Christ.

David’s actions illustrate the kind of impact that Christians can have when we’re willing to go beyond mere words and put the love of Christ into practical action. After all, talk is cheap. Look at Jesus: he didn’t just say he loved the world, he showed his love by becoming a servant.

Jesus served the blind by restoring their sight, lepers by renewing their health, sinners by forgiving their wrongs, and even wedding guests at Cana by turning water into wine. Then in the greatest act of servanthood in history, the Son of God willingly sacrificed his life in order to open the doors of heaven for anyone who would trust in him.

When we serve others as Jesus would, when we sacrifice for others as Jesus did, and when we put our love into tangible action as Jesus modeled, then this can open the hardest of hearts that would otherwise be impervious to the message of Christ. Jesus told us in Matthew 5:16 that if we serve others with “good deeds,” they will be prompted to “praise your Father in heaven.” That’s because when we make the choice to sacrifice our time, energy, or finances to help someone in need — that is, when we act against the grain of our narcissistic, me-first culture — then -people will be curious about what motivates us. Their eyes will naturally drift toward our heavenly Father, who is prompting us to live out the kind of compassionate lifestyle that his Son exhibited.
Words evaporate quickly. Most of what a pastor says in a sermon will be forgotten before dinner. But -people remember a selfless act of servanthood forever. To use Jesus’ metaphors of salt and light, few things are as savory or illuminating as a simple act of kindness performed in the name of Jesus.

I can attest to that because I’ll never forget David.
 
Action Principle
If you want to inject some adventure into your life, use your “compassion radar” to scan the lives of your neighbors, colleagues, and other -people you encounter. Detect their needs and then seek out opportunities to serve them. Your sacrifice on their behalf will be an example of what Jesus is like, and there’s a good chance they’re going to want to know more about the One who motivates you.
 
Stepping into the Adventure
Is there an elderly widow down the block who needs someone to go to the grocery store for her each week? Or a junior high student who’s looking for someone to shoot baskets with him? Or a single mother who could use a baby-sitter for her two children every once in a while? Or a disabled veteran who needs someone to clear the snow off his sidewalk? Or a colleague who’s going through a divorce and could use a listening ear over lunch?

Opportunities to serve others are all around us; we just need to ask God to open our eyes to the situations where he wants us to get involved. You’ll be surprised at how easily and naturally spiritual conversations flow when -people feel sincere gratitude for the help you’ve provided them.

I remember flying into Midway Airport in Chicago late at night during a blizzard several years ago. An engineer from India was sitting next to me. As we talked, I found out he was planning to take a bus all the way to O’Hare Airport and then have his pregnant wife drive down from a distant suburb with his two young children to pick him up. To me, that sounded like a formula for frustration.

“Look, I have a car at Midway,” I told him. “How about if I give you a lift home?”

He was very grateful, and during our drive through the snowstorm, he asked why I had been willing to go out of my way for a stranger like him. I tried to explain by saying, “Has anybody ever done something so kind for you that it makes you want to pass a kindness along to someone else?”

He thought for a moment and then nodded slightly.
“Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “Jesus Christ has done something incredibly kind for me.”

As we talked, he began to understand how God’s outpouring of grace had motivated me to help him. When we finally arrived at his house, he braced for the cold as he stepped from the car. “I’m going to have to do some thinking about all of this,” he said as he thanked me and said good-bye.

There’s no doubt in my mind: my words about Jesus registered with him because he experienced the love of Jesus through my practical deed of giving him a ride through a storm.

The truth is that even the simplest acts can have an eternal impact.
 
Inspiration for the Journey
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16 TNIV

Taken from The Unexpected Adventure by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg. Copyright © 2009 by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg. Used by permission of Zondervan.