Transformed by Love

Holidays can be excellent, though often difficult, opportunities to reach out to relatives and friends who don’t know the Lord. Lonely people, international students—these were the kind of people, Jesus said, to invite to a “feast.” We should ask those who cannot recompense us, or invite us back (see Lk 14:13-14). I recall a life-changing incident the year my dad was in the hospital just before Christmas. The man who shared his room had been stranded in our city some years before when he and his wife had a severe auto wreck. His wife ended up for years in critical care and so he stayed in town, even after she died. Now he was all alone. So when he and Dad were both released about the same time, nothing would do but that he should spend Christmas with us. He later told how his life was transformed by seeing the love of Christ in action. He believed the strange circumstances of his life were meant to bring him to the Savior. “Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least…” (Mt 25:40).

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