Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NIV)
9 Two are better than one, because they have a good
return for their labor:
10 If either of them falls down, one can help the other
up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
11 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But
how can one keep warm alone?
12 Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
A North Dakota blizzard was howling outside Dr.
Thompson's office one night. About nine o'clock the phone rang.
"Can you come out to my place?" Tony Sebastian
was on the other end. "My boy is running a high fever and is unconscious.
It's impossible for us to get in to you. Do you think you could make it out to
us?"
"I'll do my best." The doctor glanced out the
window. "But this storm scares me. Never had it so bad where I came
from."
Stopping at a tavern on his way out of town, he got three
men to go
with him. "I may need you," he said, "to
shovel me out of the snow."
About halfway the men gave up exhausted. The drifts kept
getting deeper and deeper. So the doctor left his car with the men and got a
farmer to saddle him a horse for the rest of the journey to Tony's.
The doctor did his best for the boy, but he saw toward
morning that unless he could get him to a hospital under intensive care,
survival would be hopeless. He thought of Ed, the county commissioner. Maybe he
could get a crew out and clear the road.
"Don't think I can," said Ed, sleepily
answering the phone. "But I'll try."
Imagine the doctor's surprise, when he got his patient
out to the main road about sunrise, to find the doctor's car ready and waiting,
and to learn that the road all the way into town had been cleared.
Later at the hospital, the crisis past, Dr. Thompson
thought of Ed again and rang to thank him and the road crew for what they had
done.
"Don't thank us," said Ed. "We had nothing
to do with it."
"Who did then?" asked the doctor.
"Well," he said, "you've got to know the
people around here to understand what happened. When they heard you ring me on
the party line, they knew something must be wrong and they listened in. Every
able-bodied man and boy along that road went to work shoveling and plowing
snow. That's how it got done.
"You see, we live out here in God's wide-open
country, where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free. And when anybody's in
trouble, we all pitch in and help. We call it 'putting love on the line.'
"
How desperately society needs this old-fashioned love today,
and the healing influence of neighbors who care.
Dear Lord, help us be the hands and feet for those around
us. Help us show Your love to those
around us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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