"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I,of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories, in all their particularity,as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally." -Frederick Buechner



Friday, August 13, 2010

The Makings of a Hero

So as I continue to learn from meeting my new "heroes" I continue to realize their conviction is what makes them stand out.  I've just met 9 people who truly believe and live out 24/7 their belief that "one died for all...that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." 2 Cor. 5:14 and 15.

Carrie told her story of being a missionary in Iraq along with 4 others, one of them being her husband. She describes a great day of making a new contact with group of people who had a very unreliable small water supply. Her husband and their friends provided ways to improve the water supply. That is how they ministered to the physical needs of these people. After a great meeting on the way home their vehicle was suddenly overtaken by terrorists with automatic weapons. To make a long story short 3 of her friends were killed right there. Her husband died the next day. She tells of brave Iraqi men who came to the rescue of her husband and herself at great danger to themselves. Standing there after many surgeries, a month in the hospital and many, many months of rehabilitation she states, "the only difference between those Iraqi terrorists and me, is Jesus."  See?  She believes Christ died for ALL. That He loves us first. His love is not based on us. It's based on Him. He is love.

When I stop and really think about that, it changes everything. It changes me. What do you think?

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