We are pain avoidersY

Ezdras administered the water baptism. There were many teenage boys baptized so this is heart warming for me as a father especially on Father’s Day eve.

Dr. Hines group left today.

The Espranza (down) girls were so sweet by spending time with Dottie and me while a number of older children blessed me with gifts.

You and I are pain avoiders. No one but a sadist wants to be around those who suffer. We avoid watching people bleed or die. I can still remember as a high school junior seeing a football player from the visiting team break his leg in front of me and that leg ripped through his skin and even his pants.The protruding bone made me vomit. It was a sickening sight. Over the years I have seen cancer, burnings, accident victims as well as birth defects and other people who have suffered physical wounds that are obvious. Never have I enjoyed the sight!

However, as Christians, Jesus expects that we go to those who are suffering. I want to only give you a thought here at this moment and ask that you think on it for the next 24 hours. It is told of Hubert Humphrey that he was possibly the most compassionate us sebator and Vice-president in American history. The questions of the visiting group concerned why there was so much competition and so little compassion in American politics.

Without hesitation Humphrey went to his desk and retrieved a pencil. He ran his finger along the shaft of the pencil and said “This shaft represents the competition in not only politics but the competition in life”. And then he placed his finger on the eraser and said, “It is the eraser that represents the COMPASSION in life. It is the the eraser that corrects the pencil shaft errors.”

I have never forgotten that!!