A Story about Brotherly Love
Have
you ever lived in a home with a basement?
We
hadn’t until I moved my family back to the Midwest in 1988. Our home there had a finished basement which
included a master bedroom, play room, laundry room and a workout room with
Jacuzzi. We loved having the extra
space, not to mention that the basement was the best place to hang out during a
hot and humid Midwestern summer.
When
I took my first call to serve as pastor to a church outside of St. Louis, we
found a nice home with a basement. With
the help of a couple of young carpenters, we finished off the basement and
created a place where we could work, offer company a place to stay or just
settle down in front of the TV for a nice, quiet evening.
All
was well and good until early one Sunday morning when our kids woke us with
these words: “There’s water in the basement.”
It’s
not much fun to have to drive over to your 24 hour superstore at 1 am to
purchase a wet-vac. That’s what we did
and we managed to get the water all cleaned up, only to have the basement flood
again…and again…and again.
After
consulting with several experts we bit the bullet, so to speak, and put in a
sump pump. To do this, we had to empty
the basement of every piece of furniture.
This was a hard job and my son and I had to put in for an extra order of
Ben-Gay when we were all finished.
A few
weeks later, the sump pump was installed and our carpeting was
reinstalled. My son and I decided that
we would meet one afternoon at 4 pm to move all the furniture back down
stairs. But neither one of us looked
forward to that job. We hadn’t quite
recovered from our last assignment.
At
about five minutes to four, the doorbell rang.
That seemed odd – my son would just come into the house. I opened the door and four guys from church
were standing there. A couple of cars
pulled up in front of the house and three more guys came walking across the
lawn. They said, “We’re here to help you
move your stuff back downstairs. Where
do you want us to begin?”
One
of our members, a dear friend named Ellen, had somehow heard about our moving
job. She took pity on me and my son and
started calling men in our church and asking them to come give us a hand. With all the help we had, all our furniture
and other stuff was moved back in the basement in less than an hour. A job that my son and I were dreading was
taken care of with ease.
The
apostle Paul commended the Thessalonians for the brotherly love they showed
each other and their neighboring churches.
Their love for the Lord’s forgiveness and salvation moved them to extend
that love to their friends and neighbors.
My
son and I were on the receiving end of such brotherly love and we’ve never
forgotten it. So now I ask you to think
about it – to whom can you show such love? Your next-door neighbor? A friend at
work? Someone at church? In the words of the folks at Nike – just do it! Show
some brotherly love today.
