Jack Kelley, a reporter from USA Today tells the story of a trip to
In his retelling of the story he recalls how the smell of death is something that gets into your hair, onto your skin, onto your clothes, and can’t be washed off. As he made his way down the road he came across a little boy. He could tell that the boy had worms and was malnourished; his stomach was protruding. His hair had turned a reddish color and his skin had wrinkled as if he were 100 years old, both signs of malnourishment. The photographer who was traveling with the reporter had a grapefruit which he gave to the boy. But the boy was so weak that he couldn’t hold the whole grapefruit for himself. And so they cut the grapefruit in half and gave it to him. He took the grapefruit, looked up at the two men as if to say “thank you” and began to walk back towards his village. What the little boy didn’t realize was that the photographer and reporter were following at a distance.
As he entered the village, there was another little boy who looked to be dead. His eyes were completely glazed over. As it turned out, this was his younger brother. The older brother kneeled down next to his younger brother, bit off a piece of the grapefruit and chewed it. Then he opened up his younger brother’s mouth, put the grapefruit in, and worked his brother’s jaw up and down. The reporter and photographer later learned that the older brother had been doing that for the younger brother for two weeks. A couple days later the older brother died of malnutrition, and the younger brother lived.
I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when he said, “There is no greater love than to lay down our life for somebody else.” Love changes everything. It changes our hearts and causes us to do things for others that we would never have done before.
Keith Manry
