While waiting to pick up a friend at the airport in Portland, Oregon, I had one of those life-changing experiences that you hear other people talk about -the kind that sneaks up on you unexpectedly.

This one occurred a mere two feet away from me.

Straining to locate my friend among the passengers deplaning through the jetway, I noticed a man coming toward me carrying two light bags. He stopped right next to me to greet his family.

First he motioned to his youngest son (maybe six years old) as he laid down his bags. They gave each other a long, loving hug. As they separated enough to look in each other’s face, I heard the father say, “It’s so good to see you, son. I missed you so much!” His son smiled somewhat shyly, averted his eyes and replied softly, “Me, too, Dad!”

Then the man stood up, gazed in the eyes of his oldest son (maybe nine or ten) and while cupping his son’s face in his hands said, “You’re already quite the young man. I love you very much, Zach!” They too hugged a most loving, tender hug.

While this was happening, a baby girl (perhaps one or one-and-a-half) was squirming excitedly in her mother’s arms, never once taking her little eyes off the wonderful sight of her returning father. The man said, “Hi, baby girl!” as he gently took the child from her mother. He quickly kissed her face all over and then held her close to his chest while rocking her from side to side. The little girl instantly relaxed and simply laid her head on his shoulder, motionless in pure contentment.

After several moments, he handed his daughter to his oldest son and declared, “I’ve saved the best for last!” and proceeded to give his wife the longest, most passionate kiss I ever remember seeing. He gazed into her eyes for several seconds and then silently mouthed. “I love you so much!” They stared at each other’s eyes, beaming big smiles at one another, while holding both hands.

For an instant they reminded me of newlyweds, but I knew by the age of their kids that they couldn’t possibly be. I puzzled about it  for a moment then realized how totally engrossed I was in the wonderful display of unconditional love not more than an arm’s length away from me.

I suddenly felt uncomfortable, as if I was invading something sacred, but was amazed to hear my own voice nervously ask, “Wow! How long have you two been married?” “Been together fourteen years total, married twelve of those.” he replied, without breaking his gaze from his lovely wife’s face. “Well then, how long have you been away?” I asked the man finally turned and looked at me, still beaming his joyous smile.“Two whole days!” Two days? I was stunned.

By the intensity of the greeting, I had assumed he’d been gone for at least several weeks – if not months. I know my expression betrayed me, I said almost offhandedly, hoping to end my intrusion with some semblance of grace (and to get back to searching for my friend), “I hope my marriage is still that passionate after twelve years!” The man suddenly stopped smiling.

He looked me straight in the eye, and with forcefulness that burned right into my soul, he told me something that left me a different person. He told me, “Don’t hope, friend… decide!” Then he flashed me his wonderful smile again, shook my hand and said, “God bless!”

With that, he and his family turned and strode away together.

I was still watching that exceptional man and his special family walk just out of sight when my friend came up to me and asked, “What’cha looking at?” Without hesitating, and with a curious sense of certainty, I replied, “My future!

——  by Michael D. Hargrove

In one of his many books, author Max Lucado tells the fanciful story about what he supposedly did one time while he and his family were living in Brazil. They had gone on a week-long summer vacation and returned home to find that Max had inadvertently unplugged the freezer instead of the radio. For seven days this freezer full of food had sat there in a very hot apartment with the power off.

Max was soon identified as the culprit and, therefore, given the clean-up responsibility. He knew exactly what to do. He got a bucket and a rag and started washing the outside of the freezer. He was sure if he polished it up really nice that the horrible smell would go away. When he got through he opened the freezer door, but the rotten mess of spoiled food was still there.

So then he decided that what that freezer needed was a few friends. What a sorry social life it had as the lone appliance in a utility room. It wasn’t easy, but Max managed to round up a number of other stoves, refrigerators, and washing machines. They practically filled the apartment. What a party! They played games (pin the plug in the socket) and told microwave jokes. Max just knew that all this social interaction would cure the inside of the freezer. Yet when he opened the door again to check, the stink was even worse!

The next idea Max came up with was a winner, or so he thought. He figured that this freezer just needed some status–a little prestige to raise its self-esteem. So he got a Mercedes sticker and put it on the front. On the back he stuck a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker and even installed a cell phone on the side. He sprinkled a little cologne on top and gave it a credit card, too. This was one classy freezer. Max stepped back and gazed with admiration saying, “You might just make the cover of Popular Mechanics!” The freezer just blushed. Expecting to find the inside all nice and clean as well, Max was practically knocked over by the odor when he opened the door this time.

Max (you’ve got to admire his persistence) gave it one last try. He decided his freezer was really in need of some high-voltage pleasure, so he got it several copies of Playfridge (you know, the magazine that has full-color photos of freezers with the doors open). He rented some videos featuring sexy appliances. A few days of all this supercharged entertainment should have done the trick, Max thought. When he opened the door, he nearly got sick.

By now you’re thinking, “What kind of idiot would waste all this effort on the outside when the problem was on the inside?” But wait a minute, don’t we do the same thing?

A homemaker is struggling with depression. What does her friend suggest? Going out and buying a new dress! A husband has an affair and finds that it only leaves him with a huge burden of guilt. The solution? A new set of friends! Start hanging around with people who don’t make you feel guilty. In a hundred different ways, we fix up the outside while ignoring the inside. The moral of the story about Max’s silly antics is clear: “You change your life by changing your heart.”

—- The Applause of Heaven by Max Lucado. Word, 1990. Pages 122-125.

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand. That afternoon, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple’s new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing. At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor’s soft words dropped like bombs. “I don’t think she’s going to make it,” he said. “There’s only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, her future could be a very cruel one.”

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk; she would never talk; she would probably be blind; she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation; and on and on.

“No! No!” was all Diana could say. She and David with their 5 year-old son Dustin, had dreamed of the day they would become a family of four.

Now, in a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away. “David said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements,” Diana remembers, “I felt so bad for him because he was doing everything, trying to include me, but I just couldn’t listen.” I said, “No, that is not going to happen, no way! I don’t care what the doctors say. Danae is not going to die! One day she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!”

Danae clung to life with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure but as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Danae’s underdeveloped nervous system was essentially “raw,” the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort – so they couldn’t even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests. All they could do was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.

As the weeks went by, she slowly gained weight and strength. When Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her. Two months later, though doctors continued to warn that her chances of survival-much less living a normal life-were next to zero, Danae went home, just as her mother had predicted.

Five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl. She shows no signs of any mental or physical impairments. But this happy ending is far from the end of her story. One blistering summer afternoon, Danae was sitting in her mother’s lap watching her brother’s baseball team practice. As always, Danae was chattering non-stop with her mother. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, “Do you smell that?”

Detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, “Yes, it smells like rain.” Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, “No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest.”

Tears blurred Diana’s eyes as Danae then hopped down to play. Her daughter’s words confirmed what the Blessing family had known all along. During the first two months of life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest, and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

Will we be ever able to smell God as she did?