A Gift of Perspective

Earlier this month, I preached from 1 Corinthians 6 about lawsuits between believers. In our extremely litigious society, it seems you can't tell the Christians from the non-Christians when it comes to "getting what I'm owed." I thought I did justice to both the biblical context and an application in today's society.

Later that week, I received a note from one of our "little old ladies." We have a wonderful contingent of widows who fill in everywhere at the church from cleaning to rocking babies to sleep. She wrote how her husband had gone in for a simple surgery. But, what was to take two hours lasted over four hours. The surgeons had nicked an artery and it took 10 pints of blood to repair. Later, her husband suffered another incident because of the surgeon error from which he did not recover.

After his death, the hospital came to her with a release form to sign. She said, "I hardly hesitated at all in signing the form. Although I didn't come from a wealthy family, they provided a wealth of Christian values and virtues. I moved on from that incident rather than letting it prolong and, perhaps, control my whole life."

This is just another example to me of the wisdom of age. Our culture says to squeeze those incompetent people for every cent. Get revenge. Get what's "owed" to you. My elderly friend knew that this price was much too high to pay. Once again, I'm awed by the experiences of my older friends!

2 Samuel 16-17