Copyright @ 1991 by
Autumn House Publishing Company
Hagerstown MD 21740,
and is displayed here by permission.The author assumes full responsibility for the accuracy of all facts and quotations as cited in this book. Unless otherwise credited, all texts in this book are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright @ 1973, 1978 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
This book was edited by Richard W. Coffen and designed by Bill Kirstein
ISBN 1-878951-21-1
Note: In typing this for my web site, I resisted
the temptation to update the ages of my children,
leaving everything as it was in 1991.....Bob Cork~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Power of Love
By Bob Cork
Try this experiment the next time you have a group of friends together. Give them a rope that has been tied in a circle, and ask them each to hold part of the rope. Inevitably they will stretch it tight, each person on the loop as far from the others as possible.
Love would relax the rope. People would be comfortable standing, working, worshiping near one another. And the bond of the circle of people on the rope, without the tension of pulling against one another, would be more powerful.
Love is a word with several meanings. Small children think it means "mushy." 10-year-old boys think it is something "sissy," and teenagers think it is the ultimate emotion. But the love children resist, then dream about, is the romantic love that leads to marriage.
The love that the world really needs more of is different from the love of hugs and kisses. It is the love of caring and friendship. It penetrates, with power that is often silent, the barriers of selfishness and fear that people build between each other.
At work, in school, even in church we seem to be so hung up on a spirit of independence that the necessity of interdependence on one another is forgotten. We are conditioned to think, especially in "free" America, that going it alone is the honorable way.
The struggle to find ways to live together, and love together, is not new. Men and women have always seemed to be willing to work together at times of crisis, but thereafter to search for separate paths to follow.
Looking back 2,000 years, we read about a city where many citizens were caught up in such a struggle, and we are told they were offered a unique solution to the conflicts they brought upon themselves by pulling on the rope that was meant to link them to a singular purpose.
It was a port city of great commercial activity, and the family tree of its population had roots in many places. People were forever coming through, on their way from this place to that, staying just long enough to rest, or longer, to enjoy the special treats of the city.
The large marketplace displayed an abundance of garments and goods. Its many taverns dispensed legal poison for the thirsty. Thousands cheered at sporting events in the large stadium. The city afforded many opportunities for satisfaction of lust.
But among the multitudes of those caught up in worldly ways, a few had accepted a message that was brought to the city by a missionary. After he had been gone for a while, taking the message to other cities, they struggled among themselves as they tried to keep their new church growing.
They were concerned about divisions within the church body, concerned about different understandings of the message of the cross. They were concerned about spiritual growth, about spiritual rewards, about marriage and divorce, about eating the right food, about the best way to worship God, about their hope for the future. And each was concerned about personal salvation.
Because, you see, they had learned that Christianity ran contrary to the commercial activity of their city, contrary to the treats of gaudiness, boisterous sport, booze, betting, and sex for sale.
They discovered that what sounded easy when studied in church was difficult when they went to work. They found that the strength they felt in fellowship with believers was hard to get hold of in their homes, when a man or woman, alone, groped for understanding and courage.
They found that it was hard to keep a church body growing harmoniously when there were people from different cultures, with different personalities, with different needs, different fears, with different ideas about what it really means to love and serve God.
So they wrote to the missionary who had brought them truth, expressing their confusion, their frustration. And they asked for guidance.
The city was not called New York or San Francisco or New Orleans, and they did not write to Minneapolis, Washington, or Rome. The city was Corinth, and the believers wrote to Paul in Ephesus. The letter he returned to the new church is now called his first to Corinthians, and deals in a very practical way with spiritual and moral problems and questions.
Within his letter is a portion that deals with the way of love. We know it as chapter 13. My favorite translation is in the New International Version of the Bible.It is a message sent long ago to Corinth, but it sails across the sea of time to hearts in New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. It proclaims eternal truths worth examining one by one.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal." (verse 1)
In 1967, while sitting on a bar stool in a tavern called Mother's Playpen in Peoria, Illinois, I was talking to an attractive young woman. During our conversation I mentioned that I always been able to express myself well on paper. She replied, "It doesn't matter how well you express yourself if you have nothing to say." Then she got up and left.
I have long since stopped drinking and talking to young women in taverns, but I will always remember the point she made so clearly. Style without substance in any form of communication is meaningless. Eloquence from the pulpit, without love, is just flashy talk.
In 1974, when I was searching for self and truth, I was still coming to know Jesus Christ. But I did come to know acceptance and love while attending the 13-week Dale Carnegie Course, and I was overwhelmed when my classmates voted me the recipient of the Highest Award for Achievement.
My boss said he was not surprised, because he knew that I was a good public speaker. I told him that he did not understand. The award was not for speaking, but for the hurts, the humility, the love my friends and I had shared so intimately during the class periods.
And that is contrary, or course, to a world that is attracted to Elmer Gantry, a world that applauds rock stars who silently move their lips, a world that accepts "My Way" as an honorable theme song.
While writing newsletters in 1976 for Prevention, Inc., a drug rehabilitation center on the north side of Chicago, I met an articulate young man who had been a saxophone player in a small band. Well-dressed, handsome, and enthusiastic, he seemed to have verbal communication skills that could lift him out of the ghetto.
Gary had used his natural sales skills to rent out apartments he did not own, taking deposits from several couples for one apartment that he had somehow managed to make a key for. He would then disappear into the crowds of the big city. Slick talk. Nothing more.
When the new Gary talked about Jesus Christ, the love growing within brought out a different tone. When Gary stood with other recovering addicts in the small chapel of Prevention for an a capella rendition of "Power in the Blood," the sound was much more in tune with love than his wailing saxophone in jam sessions.
We belonged to a church in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1980, and one of the members who came every week to that large, modern church had a hearing problem. He also had a singing problem because, since he could not hear, he did not know how loudly he sang. He also did not have a touch for timing. As the old man sang, his voice seemed sour and out of place. I believe that to Jesus, however, his song sounded sweet, and I thought of that when the deaf man sang.
Paul's message tells us today that it doesn't matter how cleverly we write, how dramatically we speak, how melodiously we sing. If we do not have love, the words are just noise. Conversely, simple words--written or spoken--colored with love for people and God become poetry and music.
The halting testimony of a man or woman who has just accepted Jesus Christ is the most powerful message from any pulpit. The singing of "Away in a Manger" by 5-year-olds is the highlight of any Christmas program. Hollywood and Broadway take back seats to Calvary and Bethlehem.
"If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith than can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." (verse 2)
What good does it do to know all the connections between Daniel and the Revelation, all that was in the Old Testament, and all that will be in the new Jerusalem, if we neglect the big story in the middle? Do we sometimes forget that God became a man who lived and died for us, showing us the perfect ways of love, then rose from the dead, promised to come again, and ascended to prepare a place for us?
It is good to have knowledge of outer space, but that is useless without love in our hearts. It is good to have an education from Yale University, but that is useless if the graduate has no concern for the drunks and panhandlers on the sidewalk in front of the Yale Co-op.
It is good to believe that hard work will bring success, but does that justify stepping on others as we climb the ladder to get it? It is good to believe that God loves us, but are we really thrilled that God loves every one of our neighbors too? Knowledge and faith without love are nothing at all.
Believing that "what goes around comes around," some people profess faith as acceptance of the law of averages. Others say, "God helps those who help themselves," as if it were a guarantee from Scripture that doing the right thing automatically and quickly bears visible fruit. So famine is blamed simply on lack of faith on the part of those who are starving.
The God I know does not promise an absence of problems and pain upon acceptance of His love. Instead, He pretty much guarantees they will increase. God offers us a trail through the forest fire. Although he says "all things work together for good," He does not say how or when.
Mrs. Joyce Friestad, an exuberant public relations secretary and organizer of special events at a Rockford, Illinois, church, believed that faith meant more than patiently and persistently rolling the dice. Joyce professed her faith as an acronym (Forsaking All, I Trust Him) and lived her faith by loving everyone she met.
"If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." (verse 3)
Paul is concerned with motive here. If we give to the poor because we think that wins us points with God, or if we surrender to times of persecution because we believe that to be the ticket to eternal life (and we will do "anything" for that), then perhaps our motive is to help ourselves.
The world is familiar with gangsters who give to charity and the church, who share bits of their ill-gotten gain in such a way as to look like heroes to those who need.
But are the "high visibility" hoodlums any different from the church member who justifies a deceptive business practice by being able to share more of his or her profit with God?
The story in the book of Daniel about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is not an adventure story of young men who walked into flames because they expected that action to save them, but a testimony to unequivocal acceptance of the power and love and goodness of God.
God wants us to love enough to want to give all we have to those in need. God wants us to love Him enough to want to surrender all that we are and ever hope to be to His purpose. God wants us to love as He loves, to give as He gives. When that load seems to be too heavy to bear, Jesus offers His strength to help us love like that.
"Love is patient." (verse 4)
Love is patient when a child is slow to learn, or when a child stumbles and falls, then keeps following the same path, only to stumble and fall again. Love is just as patient when a parent is slow to learn, when a parent stumbles and falls. Our youngest of six children is now 16, and I am not sure which is more difficult, being a teenager or being the parent of a teenager, but both roles demand patient love.
During the first 15 years of our marriage, because of her commitment to "the right thing" and her patience in tough times, my wife held on, even when she would have been justified, in the eyes of society, to throw me out. Now that we have been married 30 years, I am thankful for her patience.
After I "bottomed out" in the world, I met a man in Rockford - C.J. Ulrich -who patiently led me into the family of God. This man, who was like a second father, was calm when I shouted, and silent when he knew that I was not ready for him to speak. This man prayed with me, wept with me, and helped me find and follow a path to the person of Jesus.
It was C.J. who gave me the opportunity to work for Prevention, Inc., and it was Tony Rivera, the director of that inner-city ministry, who told me about the "warm turkey" love of Jesus Christ that had delivered him from bondage to tobacco, alcohol, and heroin.
The next day, September 21, 1976, I took "Tony's cure for smoking," - the love of Jesus Christ. In His strength at 1:30 in the afternoon I was delivered, as Tony had been, from bondage to cigarettes and booze, poisons that had chained me for 15 years.
Still, I did not comprehend the depth of Tony's love until he told me later that his wife had left him when he accepted Christ and that she had since given birth to another man's child. Tony said he was waiting patiently, with forgiveness in his heart, for his wife to come back, and Tony believed that Jesus would bring her home to him.
"Love is kind." (verse 4)
Early in December of 1988 I was driving home from Bridgeport, Connecticut, on the Merritt Parkway. It was raining and nearly dark. I saw a stranded car on the shoulder, then an older woman walking on the wet grass. She wore a raincoat and a hat, and she was struggling, because she was heavy and the footing was not even, and she did not have a flashlight.
Traffic was too heavy for me to stop suddenly, but as I drove on down the road, I realized she was nearly a mile from a rest station and public telephone. My exit was the next one, and I thought that I should go on home, that someone else would stop to help her. But it was dark and wet and cold and she did not have a flashlight.
I got back onto the parkway, drove down to the next exit, got off and on again, drove slowly with my blinkers on, spotted her, and pulled onto the grassy shoulder just ahead of her. I asked if that was her car; she said yes and that she was walking to a gas station to call her son. I told her that was more than a mile, and she was surprised.
"I can give you a ride," I offered.
"They say you're not supposed to ride with strangers," she said.
I replied, "They also say you're not supposed to stop and help."
"I'll trust you," she said, and she got into my car. It was obvious she had been crying as she walked in the rain. "The car just stopped," she said, "and I didn't know what to do, and I prayed..."
She explained that her son, who lived nearby, would come and get her as soon as she called him from him from the station, and I told her that I came back because I figured she could have been my mother stranded somewhere on a dark and rainy night. I told her I was glad that God had prompted me to turn around, to answer her prayer for help.
My friend Tedd Harris told me of a time when he was living in Chicago. After his first child was born, he was driving home from the hospital, and his car got stuck in deep water. Heavy rain had flooded a viaduct. Several tough-looking teenagers walked to his car, and Tedd felt apprehensive because it was a rough neighborhood and it was dark. The kids helped him push his car out of the water, and he was able to restart it. Tedd offered to pay them, but they refused the money, saying simply, "Pass it on."
Love "does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud." (verse 4)
We are conditioned to believe that the great American way is always to win. We are told we should not settle for second best. Is that conditioning what causes us not to be happy when a fellow worker gets a promotion, not to be overjoyed when one of our neighbors benefits from favorable circumstances? Do we wish we had more?
Love helps us handle disappointment, helps us be happy when others win, helps us be humble when we win. Love helps us realize that all we have that is good comes from God.
There was a time in my life when I realized, even after accepting Christ as my Savior, that my free-lance writing was too important to me. I was at times more concerned with having articles published than spending time with my children. I told God I was willing to stop, to put my dream forever on the shelf, to do whatever He wanted me to do.
Pastor Dell Kinney, of the Davis, Illinois, Baptist Church, had given me a book called So Long, Joey, the story of Dave Boyer, nightclub singer, who was ready for suicide when the love of Jesus Christ brought him back to truth, the restoration of his family, and a new career in gospel music.
I was ready, as Dave Boyer had been, to do something else, anything else - to pick up any shovel God chose to put into my hand. God did what the world would call a funny thing. After I gave up my writing for Him, He gave it back to me, for His glory, not mine, just as He had given music back to Dave Boyer.
Love "is not rude, it is not self-seeking" (verse 5)
Part of the story of Eric Liddell was told in the compelling and inspirational film Chariots of Fire. Eric refused to run in the 1924 Olympic Games in his best event, the 100-meter dash, because the heats were scheduled on Sunday, which he believed was a day set aside to honor God.
The good news of the story was that Eric trained for a longer event, the 400-meter dash, and won the Olympic gold medal in that event in world record time.
The better news, left out of the film, was an incident in Shantung Compound during World War II, when Eric Liddell, missionary, refereed a field hockey game on a Sunday in order to keep teenagers, bored with captivity, from fighting with each other during the game. He would not run for Olympic gold on Sunday, but he would love kids.
Love "is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." (verse 5)
I still struggle with a tendency to be very demanding of myself, very angry with myself when I make a stupid mistake, when I am unable to keep a commitment. I am very unforgiving of my own carelessness. Consequently, when someone does something that is similar to those thing do not like about myself, I express anger, which is not at all like divine love but is very much like human love. A good friend told me recently that when such a moment of anger comes upon me I should accept it as good news, news that I need to be closer to Jesus, that I need to ask Him to come into that part of my life too.
There is a story of a scorpion that asked a frog to carry it across a river, and the frog hesitated, saying "You will sting me."
The scorpion replied, "Why would I be that stupid? Then we would both drown."
That made sense to the frog, so he allowed the scorpion to climb onto his back. Halfway across the river the scorpion stung the frog. As paralysis set in, the frog lamented, "Why did you do that?"
The scorpion replied, "I guess it's just my nature."
My nature is to be easily angered, to keep a record of wrongs, especially my own. Without the love of Jesus I would have no hope of changing that. With His love I can, when I ask for his help.
Recently I was sitting in the pews of a church in New Haven, Connecticut, where I am a member, and I looked around. My eyes and heart went first to one friend, then another, then another, and I realized that each friend I focused on had come to a relationship with Jesus Christ in the nine years since my family moved back to Connecticut from Wisconsin.
I thought of their struggles, some similar to mine. I thought of opportunities I had been given to encourage them. And I realized that the bottom line of Christianity is not preaching or music or doctrine, but changed lives. I remembered the day my mother looked at me and said, quietly, "Bob, you've changed." I looked at my friends in that New Haven congregation and realized what love does to people.
Then I thought about Tony Rivera, who was willing to love his wife and forgive her and wipe the slate clean, if only she would return home. I thought my own wife, who had not thrown me out when I deserved it. I thought about Jesus kneeling and writing in the sand and then telling the young woman that He did not keep a record of her wrongs. Changed lives is what it's all about. Changed by His love.
"Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth." (verse 6)
Consider the case of Corrie Ten Boom. In Holland during World War II her family hid Jews upstairs in their home, in a room they called "the hiding place." When the Gestapo came and asked questions, Corrie's father believed that he could not lie. However, it seemed that lying was the only way to protect their friends. He prayed, asking God to take control.
As the German officer inspected their house, the conversation turned to clocks on the wall. Soon the soldier was gone. He never asked the question that would have been difficult to answer. In 1 Samuel 2:30 it is written, "Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares...`Those who honor me I will honor.'" Love does find a way.
Love "always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (verse 7)
Paul did not say that love "sometimes" protects, "usually" trusts, "frequently" hopes, "more often than not" perseveres. Paul said "always," and that is a tough word to fit into contemporary human circumstances. Each of us knows it is often difficult to love.
Again consider Corrie Ten Boom. After the war she was telling her story to a large audience, telling of the faith in Jesus Christ that had gotten her through the toughest times, even when her sister died in the concentration camp they had been taken to after "the hiding place" was discovered.
After the service a man came up to Corrie and said that he had been at the same concentration camp. He wanted to know if the Jesus Corrie spoke about could love him too. Corrie Ten Boom looked into the face of the guard who had been the most cruel to her sister. She wanted so much to hate, but she put her hand into the hand of this man who had persecuted her family and told him that yes, Jesus loved him too. She would later say that never had she a greater feeling for the love of Jesus in her heart than in that moment when she touched the hand of the guard who asked for love.
We are a "sometimes, usually, frequently, more often than not" kind of people. Jesus is an "always" kind of Savior. Love does find a way
"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away." (verse 8)
We get so smart, we creatures of clever thought, that we begin to think the answers we find to tough questions are answers we invented rather than answers we discovered, and there is a big difference. Invention is of something that did not already exist. Discovery is of something already there, waiting to be understood. We get so smart we want to believe that discernment, eloquent speeches, and highly technical knowledge have solid places in history.
I sell cutting tools and abrasives to industry. Some of my customers have made products that have gone to the moon and beyond. Some build machines that are big; others work with particles so small we cannot see them. So fast, so big, so small, so incomprehensible just a few years ago. But all meaningless, as it says in Ecclesiastes; all chasing after the wind.
I was fortunate to know intimately a man and woman who were married to each other for more than 60 years, Mark and Ethel Insko. Their lives were wrapped around farming, then the training and racing of standardbred horses pulling sulkies, first at county fairs across the Midwest, then at bigger tracks. One of their sons is in the Harness Racing Hall of Fame.
Three of their children, a son and two daughters, were killed on a rainy night in Iowa when their car, on a country crossing, was struck by a train. More than 35 years after the accident Mark Insko found it difficult to talk about. His heart still ached, heavy with the hope that his children did not suffer.
Love never fails.
Another friend, Ed Howard, formerly the director of the Vigo County Public Library in Terre Haute, Indiana, was a Navy warrant officer on Guam in 1941. Ed was captured on the third day of the conflict and spent the entire war as a POW. While Ed waited to be taken by ship to Japan, his young wife, Maraquita, was able, at great risk, to give Ed the family Bible.
During the dark years of loneliness, the Word of God gave Ed strength, and he often thought of his wife's courageous love. After the war Ed Howard went back to the island and learned from his wife's parents that a Japanese office had insisted the young woman be his concubine, She had refused, with the same courageous love, and was executed.
Love never fails.
"For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears" (verses 9 and 10)
We often hear it said that "practice makes perfect." That may be true for the s school play. The first reading may progress to rehearsals that make sense, then finally to a command performance. "Practice makes perfect" my apply, in a sense, to baking apple pies, or playing the trumpet, or driving an automobile, but practice never makes perfect with love.
No doubt we are to practice love, to be patient, to be kind, to trust, and to hope. No doubt we are to put God first, and then others, and not worry about ourselves. And all of that practice is good. But none of that practice will make our love perfect.
Love that is perfect has the big words of "always" and "never." Perfect love is not the nature of man, but only the nature of God, the nature of Jesus, because Jesus is the perfection that came to make the imperfect disappear.
Jesus came as a child with perfect love. Jesus lived by example with perfect love. Jesus died for us with perfect love. Jesus will come again with perfect love to take us home. It is His nature always to keep His promises.
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." (verse 11)
I had a problem with that verse when I was a teenager, and also when I was a young husband and father, trying to "make it" in the world. I even had a problem comprehending that verse when I was a new Christian. I liked the sound of it, the poetic ring, but I was a bit confused. I had always thought we were supposed to have faith like a child, and here Paul is saying we should put childish ways behind us.
It is not the childlike faith that we are to put aside, but the childlike tendency to offer solutions to situations based on a limited perspective. A child is eager to get out of a crowd by maneuvering through legs. An adult looks first for an exit sign and gradually works toward it.
Being a child precedes becoming an adult, just as a bud becomes a flower, a tadpole becomes a frog, a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Being a "natural man" precedes becoming a Christian. Thinking that "winning is the only way" is followed by realization that only by losing myself to Christ do I win. Thinking that "getting is the name of the game" is followed by realization that "giving" is much more satisfying. This "growing up" into Christianity comes when we are touched by the perfect love of Jesus.
On a winter afternoon in 1988, in a snow-covered valley in western Maryland framed on the east and west by ridges, I watched thousands of crows and blackbirds come back to Hagerstown to roost for the night after spending the day in country cornfields. It was impossible to look at the scene with both a telephoto and panoramic view. If I focused on just one bird, I lost the flock. If I looked at the eastern ridge of gray, I missed the western gold of the setting sun.
I thought I would be able to see more from a "scenic overlook" on the eastern ridge, but I knew that, even then, I could not see as God can see. Granting God that power helped me understand His point of view. The more we know about God, the more we know that we need Him.
"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (verse 12)
I know my grandfather existed. My mother is proof enough of that. But I never met Ernest Taylor, because he died five years before I was born. I knew, from stories my mother told, that my grandfather's birth certificate said Titusville, Pennsylvania, but that he was actually born in a town called Pithole.
Shortly after Edwin Drake discovered oil in Titusville, Pithole became a boom town in the hills nearby. The town went from zero population to 10,000, then back to zero, in three years. The drinking water supply was not adequate, and oil did not come in the expected quantity.
The carpenters, my great-grandfather among them, who had erected the wood structures of the town took them down again, and the lumber was carted away to other towns of great promise. Pithole died.
I visited Pithole in 1971, while driving across Pennsylvania, after I discovered a brochure at an Interstate 80 rest stop, a brochure describing what had become a tourist attraction, a "ghost town" called Pithole.
I was there early in the morning on a hillside. I noticed depressions in the ground, where buildings had stood. I saw street signs in the woods, and I could feel crushed rock under grass trimmed short, rock where the streets had been.
And that was all there was to see of Pithole, just depressions in the ground, gravel underfoot, and street signs in the woods. It was, in 1971, a poor reflection of what had been. I stood at an intersection, I think it was 3rd and Brown, and wondered if that, perhaps, was where the grandfather I never knew had been born.
I had a map of old Pithole with me. I could see that depressions higher on the hill had been the sites of the church and school, that larger depressions along one of the streets had been for the foundations of hotels and taverns. Shops and homes had lined other streets.
But that gave me only part of what I wanted to know about Pithole. In order to feel the excitement of that town and to understand the dreams of its people, I would have to have been there when the town lived, instead of long after it died.
Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that all the love we see now, all the good things people do for one another, all the comfortable homes, good food, and health we enjoy - all those things are but a poor reflection of life as God would have us live it. Just depressions in the ground, gravel underfoot, and street signs in the woods.
Just as I am certain that my grandfather lived and that Pithole was once a thriving community, I am even more certain that we shall see love face-to-face in Jesus when He comes again. Now we know as little about His kingdom as I know about Pithole. I look forward to knowing all there is to know about the love that Jesus has to share.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (verse 13)
For two years when our children were small we had a dog named Thunder. I said he was a German shepherd, but my wife called him a mutt, partly because he was peanut-butter brown and his ears did not stand erect. Thunder was poorly disciplined and had several bad habits. My wife said it was a case of like owner, like dog.
Thunder loved to run in the fields around the home we rented in Connecticut. His favorite companion was a beagle from over the hill, a dog named Lucky. Thunder and Lucky chased groundhogs, calves, squirrels, and one skunk. But they most enjoyed chasing rabbits.
Lucky ran over logs and through grass like the hound he was born to be, with his nose to the ground while singing to the sky. Thunder ran silently by what he could see, either a white tail of a bouncing rabbit or the wagging tail of Lucky.
After we moved to Indiana, I was walking along elevated railroad tracks and watching Thunder in long grass below. I saw the rabbit he was chasing turn left, and Thunder ran past the turning point. But then he stopped, came back, and, with his nose to ground, followed the trail. Thanks to Lucky, my mutt had become a hound, running not by what he could see, but by what he knew was there.
For much of my life I also chased plump rabbits of the world. I am thankful that friends loved me enough for me to learn to run by faith, not by what the world sees but by what I know is there. Tally ho! The truth! I am thankful that another mutt is now a hound. When I think of faith, I often think of Thunder.
When I was almost 14, I watched a good friend die. We were part of a group of 60 Indiana Boy Scouts camping in northern Wisconsin for a week during Christmas vacation, and we took a side trip to Iron Mountain, Michigan, where there was a racing ski trail that twisted down the mountain.
The toboggan run at the resort was no longer open, but the older boys in our group had a toboggan with them, and naturally they went looking for a place to use it. They missed a turn on the racing ski trail, and I watched as an empty toboggan sailed through the woods.
David Mosier, sitting third on the toboggan, struck a tree head-on. By the time I got to the tree, Dave's best friend, despite three cracked vertebrae, was holding Dave in his lap, trying to stop the bleeding from his ears, trying to get a response. All we could do was hope, but that was not enough.
During the 10 years we lived in the Rockford area, 12 families I knew from business and social contacts lost children. Sons of my dentist, my barber, and a co-worker committed suicide. The rest died in accidents.
When I think of their suffering, I am encouraged by the hope we have for the victory, for the final peace that is sure to come. There will be eternal comfort for parents. Tears will dry up and hearts will be lifted. I am thankful for the hope of glory. When I think of hope, the antidote for hopeless pain, I often think of David Mosier.
In Rockford I knew a man, Harry Conn, a wealthy industrialist, a brilliant engineer, a lecturer, a lay evangelist, a committed Christian.
Harry was not timid. When he talked about the grace of God, he forcefully proclaimed, "That which is free is not earned, and that which is earned is not free!"
He was just as firm when he heard someone nitpicking about questions the Bible did not seem to answer. "I hear people wonder where Cain's wife came from," Harry would shout, "but when you're in a lifeboat that is sinking, and there are sharks swimming all around it, and you're crying out to God for help, you really don't care where Cain's wife came from!"
But Harry Conn spoke quietly when he told me of a barber he had often seen in Chicago at the Cook County Hospital, in the dormitory area, where people from the street came for medical treatment, where drunks from the gutter came to dry out.
The barber was an old black man who stood over his customers and clicked his scissors and ran his comb through hair that had not often felt a comb. As he clipped and combed, the barber would sing, "Oh, how I love Jesus, because He first loved me."
Then he would tell his customers about Jesus and ask them to accept His Lord and Savior as their own.
Haircuts at the Cook County Hospital were free, but if you climbed into that chair, no matter what sewer you had crawled out of to get there, that old barber would click his scissors, comb your hair, sing, and talk until you said yes to Jesus. Then, and only then, was your haircut finished.
In a world gone bonkers for pride and poisons, I am thankful for those who dare to love, and when I think of love, I often think of a barber in the Cook County Hospital, where the haircuts were free of charge, with music and love to boot.
Love is patient, Love is kind. Love always trusts. Love does not keep score. Love always hopes. Love never fails. Love promises clear understanding. Love guarantees a better life to come.
And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, the most powerful, is love, the love of Jesus Christ expressed through people who touch each other, as love shall ever be.
Bob Cork
5804 22nd Street West
Bradenton FL 34207bob@cactus48.com
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