by Max Lucado
Jesus was insistent on this. After the resurrection he appeared to some of his followers. He gave Peter a specific pastoral assignment that included great sacrifice. The apostle responded by pointing at John and saying, “‘Lord, what about him?’ Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to live until I come back, that is not your business. You follow me’” (John 21:21–22 NCV). In other words don’t occupy yourself with another person’s assignment; stay focused on your own.
A little boy named Adam wanted to be like his friend Bobby. Adam loved the way Bobby walked and talked. Bobby, however, wanted to be like Charlie. Something about Charlie’s stride and accent intrigued him. Charlie, on the other hand, was impressed with Danny. Charlie wanted to look and sound like Danny. Danny, of all things, had a hero as well: Adam. He wanted to be just like Adam.
So Adam was imitating Bobby, who was imitating Charlie, who was imitating Danny, who was imitating Adam.
Turns out, all Adam had to do was be himself.1
So when you begin again, stay in your own lane. Run your own race. Nothing good happens when you compare and compete. God does not judge you according to the talents of others. He judges you according to yours. His yardstick for measuring faithfulness is how faithful you are with your own gifts. You are not responsible for the nature of your gift. But you are responsible for how you use it.
So run! Move forward by faith! Find your lot in life and live in it.
You be you.
chapter fifteen
Share What God Has Given
Love . . . believes all things.
—1 CORINTHIANS 13:4–7 NASB
By all rules, Skinner was a dead man.” With these words Arthur Bressi begins his retelling of the day he found his best friend in a World War II Japanese concentration camp. The two were high-school buddies. They grew up together in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania—playing ball, skipping school, double-dating. Arthur and Skinner were inseparable. It made sense, then, that when one joined the army, the other would as well. They rode the same troopship to the Philippines. That’s where they were separated. Skinner was on Bataan when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. Arthur Bressi was captured a month later.
Through the prison grapevine, Arthur learned the whereabouts of his friend. Skinner was near death in a nearby camp. Arthur volunteered for work detail in the hope that his company might pass through the other camp. One day they did.
Arthur requested and was given five minutes to find and speak to his friend. He knew to go to the sick side of the camp. It was divided into two sections—one for those expected to recover, the other for those given no hope. Those expected to die lived in a barracks called “zero ward.” That’s where Arthur found Skinner. He called his name, and out of the barracks walked the seventy-nine-pound shadow of the friend he had once known.
As he writes:
I stood at the wire fence of the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on Luzon and watched my childhood buddy, caked in filth and racked with the pain of multiple diseases, totter toward me. He was dead; only his boisterous spirit hadn’t left his body. I wanted to look away, but couldn’t. His blue eyes, watery and dulled, locked on me and wouldn’t let go.1
Malaria. Amebic dysentery. Pellagra. Scurvy. Beriberi. Skinner’s body was a dormitory for tropical diseases. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t drink. He was nearly gone.
Arthur didn’t know what to do or say. His five minutes were nearly up. He began to finger the heavy knot of the handkerchief tied around his neck. In it was his high-school class ring. At the risk of punishment he’d smuggled the ring into camp. Knowing the imminence of disease and the scarcity of treatment, he had been saving it to barter for medicine or food for himself. But one look at Skinner, and he knew he couldn’t save it any longer.
As he told his friend good-bye, he slipped the ring through the fence into Skinner’s frail hand and told him to “wheel and deal” with it. Skinner objected, but Arthur insisted. He turned and left, not knowing if he would ever see his friend alive again.
What kind of love would do something like that? It’s one thing to give a gift to the healthy. It’s one thing to share a treasure with the strong. But to give your best to the weak, to entrust your treasure to the dying—that’s saying something. Indeed, that’s saying something to them. “I believe in you,” the gesture declares. “Don’t despair. Don’t give up. I believe in you.” It’s no wonder Paul included this phrase in his definition of love: “[Love] believes all things” (1 Cor. 13:7 NASB).
Do you know anyone who is standing on Skinner’s side of the fence? If your child is having trouble in school, you do. If your husband struggles with depression or your wife has been laid off, you do. If you have a friend with cancer, if the class mocks your classmate, if your son didn’t make the squad, if you know anyone who is afraid or has failed or is frail, then you know someone who needs a ring of belief.
And, what’s more, you can give them one. You may, by virtue of your words or ways, change that person’s life forever.
Arthur did. Want to know what happened to Skinner? He took the ring and buried it in the barracks floor. The next day he took the biggest risk of his life. He approached the “kindest” of the guards and passed him the ring through the fence. “Takai?” the guard asked. “Is it valuable?” Skinner assured him that it was. The soldier smiled and slipped the ring into a pocket and left. A couple of days later he walked past Skinner and let a packet drop at his feet. Sulfanilamide tablets. A day later he returned with limes to combat the scurvy. Then came a new pair of pants and some canned beef. Within three weeks Skinner was on his feet. Within three months he was taken to the healthy side of the sick camp. In time he was able to work. As far as Skinner knew, he was the only American ever to leave the zero ward alive.
All because of a ring. All because someone believed in him.
I know what some of you are thinking. You’re looking at Arthur and Skinner and wishing your situation were so easy. Skinner was a dying man but a good man, a good friend. How do you believe in someone who isn’t? How do you believe in a man who cheats on you or an employee who swindles you? Does love ignore all things? I don’t think so. This passage is not a call to naiveté or blindness. It is, however, a call for us to give to others what God has given us.
Skinner is not the only person to be given a ring, you know. You have one on your finger as well. Your heavenly Father placed it there. Jesus described the moment when he told the story of the prodigal son.
The tale involves a wealthy father and a willful son. The boy prematurely takes his inheritance and moves to Las Vegas and there wastes the money on slot machines and call girls. As fast as you can say “blackjack,” he is broke. Too proud to go home, he gets a job sweeping horse stables at the racetrack. When he finds himself tasting some of their oats and thinking, Hmm, a dash of salt and this wouldn’t be too bad, he realizes enough is enough. It’s time to go home. The gardener at his father’s house does better than this. So off he goes, rehearsing his repentance speech every step of the way.
But the father has other ideas. “When he was still a great way off, his father saw him.” The dad was looking for the boy, always craning his neck, ever hoping the boy would show, and when he did, when the father saw the familiar figure on the trail, he “had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.”
We don’t expect such a response. We expect crossed arms and a furrowed brow. At best a guarded handshake. At least a stern lecture. But the father gives none of these. Instead he gives gifts. “Bring out the best robe . . . a ring . . . sandals. . . . And bring the fatted calf . . . and let us eat and be merry” (Luke 15:11–23 NKJV). Robe, sandals, calf, and . . . Did you see it? A ring.
Before the boy has a chance to wash his hands, he has a ring to put on his finger. In Christ’s day rings were more than gifts; they were symbols of delegated sovereignty. The bearer of the ring could speak on behalf of the giver. It was used to press a seal into soft wax to validate a transaction. The one who wore the rin
g conducted business in the name of the one who gave it.
Would you have done this? Would you have given this prodigal son power-of-attorney privileges over your affairs? Would you have entrusted him with a credit card? Would you have given him this ring?
Before you start questioning the wisdom of the father, remember, in this story you are the boy. When you came home to God, you were given authority to conduct business in your heavenly Father’s name.
When you speak truth, you are God’s ambassador.
As you steward the money he gives, you are his business manager.
When you declare forgiveness, you are his priest.
As you stir the healing of the body or the soul, you are his physician.
And when you pray, he listens to you as a father listens to his child. You have a voice in the household of God. He has given you his ring.
The only thing more remarkable than the giving of the ring is the fact that he hasn’t taken it back! Weren’t there times when he could have?
When you promoted your cause and forgot his. When you spoke lies and not truth. When you took his gifts and used them for personal gain. When you took the bus back to Las Vegas and found yourself seduced into the world of lights, luck, and long nights. Couldn’t he have taken the ring? Absolutely. But did he? Do you still have a Bible? Are you still allowed to pray? Do you still have a dollar to manage or a skill to use? Then it appears he still wants you to have the ring. It appears he still believes in you!
He hasn’t given up on you. He hasn’t turned away. He hasn’t walked out. He could have. Others would have. But he hasn’t. God believes in you. And, I wonder, could you take some of the belief that he has in you and share it with someone else? Could you believe in someone?
In the prison camp Arthur gave Skinner much more than a ring; he gave him a proclamation, a judgment that said, “You are worth this much to me! Your life is worth saving. Your life is worth living.” He believed in him and, as a result, gave Skinner the means and the courage to save himself.
You and I have the privilege to do for others what Arthur did for Skinner and what God does for us. How do we show people that we believe in them?
Show up. Nothing takes the place of your presence. Letters are nice. Phone calls are special, but being there in the flesh sends a message.
Do you believe in your kids? Then show up. Show up at their games. Show up at their plays. Show up at their recitals. It may not be possible to make each one, but it’s sure worth the effort. An elder in our church supports me with his presence. Whenever I speak at an area congregation, he’ll show up. Does nothing. Says little. Just takes a seat in a pew and smiles when we make eye contact. It means a lot to me.
Listen up. You don’t have to speak to encourage. The Bible says, “It is best to listen much, speak little” (James 1:19 TLB). We tend to speak much and listen little. There is a time to speak. But there is also a time to be quiet. That’s what my father did. Dropping a fly ball may not be a big deal to most people, but if you are thirteen years old and have aspirations of the big leagues, it is a big deal. Not only was it my second error of the game, but it also allowed the winning run to score.
I didn’t even go back to the dugout. I turned around in the middle of left field and climbed over the fence. I was halfway home when my dad found me. He didn’t say a word. Just pulled over to the side of the road, leaned across the seat, and opened the passenger door. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. We both knew the world had come to an end. When we got home, I went straight to my room, and he went straight to the kitchen. Presently he appeared in front of me with cookies and milk. He took a seat on the bed, and we broke bread together. Somewhere in the dunking of the cookies, I began to realize that life and my father’s love would go on. In the economy of male adolescence, if you love the guy who drops the ball, then you really love him. My skill as a baseball player didn’t improve, but my confidence in Dad’s love did. Dad never said a word. But he did show up. He did listen up. To bring out the best in others, do the same, and then, when appropriate:
Speak up. Nathaniel Hawthorne came home heartbroken. He’d just been fired from his job in the custom house. His wife, rather than responding with anxiety, surprised him with joy. “Now you can write your book!”
He wasn’t so positive. “And what shall we live on while I’m writing it?”
To his amazement she opened a drawer and revealed a wad of money she’d saved out of her housekeeping budget. “I always knew you were a man of genius,” she told him. “I always knew you’d write a masterpiece.”
She believed in her husband. And because she did, he wrote. And because he wrote, every library in America has a copy of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.2
You have the power to change someone’s life simply by the words you speak. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Prov. 18:21 NKJV). That’s why Paul urges you and me to be careful. “When you talk, do not say harmful things, but say what people need—words that will help others become stronger” (Eph. 4:29 NCV).
Before you speak, ask: Will what I’m about to say help others become stronger? You have the ability, with your words, to make a person stronger. Your words are to their soul what a vitamin is to their body. If you had food and saw someone starving, would you not share it? If you had water and saw someone dying of thirst, would you not give it? Of course you would. Then won’t you do the same for their hearts? Your words are food and water! Do not withhold encouragement from the discouraged. Do not keep affirmation from the beaten down! Speak words that make people stronger. Believe in them as God has believed in you.
You may save someone’s life.
Arthur did. His friend Skinner survived. Both men returned home to Mount Carmel. One day soon after their arrival, Skinner came over for a visit. He had a gift with him. A small box. Arthur knew immediately what it was. It was an exact copy of the high-school ring. After a lame attempt at humor—“Don’t lose that; it cost me eighteen dollars”—he gave his friend a warm smile and said, “That ring, Artie . . . it saved my life.”3
May someone say the same to you.
May you say the same to God.
chapter sixteen
Love Those in Need
Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.
—MATTHEW 25:40 THE MESSAGE
At 7:51 a.m., January 12, 2007, a young musician took his position against a wall in a Washington, DC, metro station. He wore jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. He opened a violin case, removed his instrument, threw a few dollars and pocket change into the case as seed money, and began to play.
He played for the next forty-three minutes. He performed six classical pieces. During that time more than a thousand people passed by. They tossed in money to the total of $32.17. Of the thousand people seven—only seven—paused longer than sixty seconds. And of the seven, one—only one—recognized the violinist Joshua Bell.
Three days prior to this metro appearance staged by the Washington Post, Bell filled Boston’s Symphony Hall, where just fairly good tickets went for $100 a seat. Two weeks after the experiment he played for a standing-room-only audience in Bethesda, Maryland. Joshua Bell’s talents can command $1,000 a minute. That day in the subway station, he barely earned enough to buy a cheap pair of shoes.
You can’t fault the instrument. He played a Stradivarius built in the golden period of Stradivari’s career. It’s worth $3.5 million. You can’t fault the music. Bell successfully played a piece from Johann Sebastian Bach that Bell called “one of the greatest achievements of any man in history.”
But scarcely anyone noticed. No one expected majesty in such a context. Shoeshine stand to one side, kiosk to the other. People buying magazines, newspapers, chocolate bars, and lotto tickets. And who had time? This was a workday. This was the Washington workforce. Government workers mainly, on their way to budget meetings and management sessio
ns. Who had time to notice beauty in the midst of busyness? Most did not.1
Most of us will someday realize that we didn’t either. From the perspective of heaven we’ll look back on these days—these busy, cluttered days—and realize, That was Jesus playing the violin. That was Jesus wearing the ragged clothes. That was Jesus in the orphanage . . . in the jail . . . in the cardboard shanty. The person needing my help was Jesus.
There are many reasons to help people in need.
“Benevolence is good for the world.”
“We all float on the same ocean. When the tide rises, it benefits everyone.”
“To deliver someone from poverty is to unleash that person’s potential as a researcher, educator, or doctor.”
“As we reduce poverty and disease, we reduce war and atrocities. Healthy, happy people don’t hurt each other.”
Compassion has a dozen advocates.
But for the Christian none is higher than this: when we love those in need, we are loving Jesus. It is a mystery beyond science, a truth beyond statistics. But it is a message that Jesus made crystal clear: when we love them, we love him.
This is the theme of his final sermon. The message he saved until last. He must want this point imprinted on our consciences. He depicted the final judgment scene. The last day, the great Day of Judgment. On that day Jesus will issue an irresistible command. All will come. From sunken ships and forgotten cemeteries, they will come. From royal tombs and grassy battlefields, they will come. From Abel, the first to die, to the person being buried at the moment Jesus calls, every human in history will be present.
All the angels will be present. The whole heavenly universe will witness the event. A staggering denouement. Jesus at some point will “separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25:32 NKJV). Shepherds do this. They walk among the flock and, one by one, with the use of a staff direct goats in one direction and sheep in the other.