James Garfield was a lay preacher and principal of his denominational college. They say he was ambidextrious and could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other.
In 1880, he was elected president of the United States, but after only six months in office, he was shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost consciousness. At the hopital, the doctor probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet. He couldn’t find it, so he tried a silver tipped probe. Still he couldn’t locate the bullet.
They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. Despite the summer heat, they tried to keep him comfortable. he was growing very weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and over. In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell, who was working on a little device called the telephone, to see if he could locate the metal inside the president’s body. He came, he sought, and he too failed.
The president hung on through July, through August, but in September he finally died – not from the woulnd, but from infection. The repeated probing, which the physicians thought would help the man, eventually killed.
Do you think its possible for Christians to spend too long dwelling on their sin and refuse to release it to God?
Arrested by the communists during the Korean War, a South Korean Christian was sentenced to die before a firing squad. But when the officer in charge learned that this man headed an orphanage, he changed the order. Instead, he forced the believer to watch as his 19-year old son was shot to death in his place.
Some time later the communist officer was captured by United Nations forces, tried, and condemned to die. But before the execution, the Christian whose son had been killed made an emotional plea in behalf of the officer, asking that he be released into his custody. His request was granted, and eventually the officer was converted to Christ and became a pastor.
This is a true story. How could that Christian find that kind of forgiveness?
This week we will begin some discussion about Forgiveness, a powerful tool in our lives.
Back in 1999 wrestler-turned Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura took a beating for his comments in a Playboy magazine about religion being “a crutch for weak-minded people.” Local churches decided to respond by turning the other cheek. They paid for giant billboards around the Twin Cities that read “Strength training for the ‘weak-minded’.”
The ad was signed by Christian Churches of the Greater Twin Cities (CCGTC) as the latest in a series of high-profile media projects by the alliance of churches and advertising professionals.
“We are not mean-spirited,” said J.L. Glass, executive director, “and we were not trying to attack the governor, but we wanted to respond and show him that we had a sense of humor.”
Do you think that was a good way to repond, or what would be a better way?