In their book On My Honor I Will, Pennington and Bockmon recount the following story:

On July 28, 1990, the Associated Press ran the following story:

“Raymond Dunn, Jr., turned 16 Tuesday, but the profoundly retarded birthday boy feasted not on cake, to which he is allergic, but on the day’s greatest gift: the bland, brown infant formula that keeps him alive.

“Gerber Products Co., which stopped making the meat-based formula in 1985, resumed production two months ago after Raymond’s doctors said that he would die without it. Gerber employees volunteered to make a batch on their own time, and on June 26 the Dunns received a two-year supply free on charge.

“Gerber says, ‘Babies are our business,’ but Raymond is their business too,” said Carol Dunn, who spent five years trying to get the company to retool for a market of one. When Gerber decided to drop the product five years ago, Mrs. Dunn was unable to find or create any substitute that did not make Raymond sick. Frantic, she hunted down every can she could find, and Gerber kept passing along its own backlog. By July 1988, Gerber ran out of MBF, leaving Raymond with less than two years’ supply.

“Supported by the State Association for Retarded Children, Mrs. Dunn begged Gerber to make more MBF and began a mail campaign asking others to pressure the company. Finally, the company’s research director consented. Meanwhile, at Gerber, volunteers in the research division put their own projects on hold, hauled out old equipment, and devoted seven thousand square feet and several days of production space and time to Raymond’s supply of MBF. It arrived in Yankee Lake (NY) in time. The Dunns had about two dozen cans of the old formula, enough to last through the end of July.”

The authors concluded, “Why would a company and its employees go to so much trouble for a market of one? The obvious answer was that they cared – really cared. To skeptics that might counter with, ‘But they got a lot of good publicity out of it!’ we respond, ‘So? What’s wrong with getting credit for a good deed?'”

Tags: care, food, love, mercy

David Roper tells this interesting story:

“Some years ago I placed a squirrel feeder on a fir tree a few yards from our home. It’s a simple device – two boards and a nail on which to impale a corncob. Each morning a squirrel comes to enjoy that day’s meal. She’s a pretty thing – black with a round, gray tummy.

“I sit on our back porch in the morning and watch her eat. She plucks each kernal from the cob, holds it in her paws, turns it around and eats the heart out of the kernel. At the end of the day no kernals remain, only a neat little pile of leftovers under the tree.

“Despite my care for her, the creature is afraid of me. When I approach, she runs away, taking refuge in her tree and chattering at me when I get too close. She doesn’t know that I provide for her.

“Some people are like that with God. They run from Him in fear. They don’t know that He loves them and richly provides them with everything for their enjoyment” (Psalm 65:11).

Tags: blindness, fear, food, provision