Selfless Love

After the horrific Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (referred to as 9/11), many heartwarming stories began circulating.

One such story is of sixty-two-year-old Rick Rescorla, a veteran of both the British and American armies and a hero on the battlefields of Vietnam.

He was responsible for evacuating hundreds of people from the South Tower of the World Trade Center. And Rescorla calmed them by singing old songs from his native Cornwall, England. When one of his colleagues told Rescorla that he, too, had to evacuate the building, Rescorla replied, “You hear those screams? There’s more people up there. I have to help get them out.” Another story is told of twenty-four-year-old Welles Crowther, who came to be known as “the man in the red bandana.” A group was trapped in the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby.

“A man with a red bandana covering his nose and mouth suddenly appeared from the wreckage and smoke. He spoke in a calm voice and guided them to a stairway, leading them to safety.” Crowther encouraged them to help others, and he made three trips up to the sky lobby before the tower collapsed.

“As survivor Judy Wein, who was rescued by Crowther, notes, ‘People can live 100 years and not have the compassion, the wherewithal to do what he did.’” In a world with so much cruelty and competition, what motivates people like Rescorla and Crowther to sacrifice their own lives for people they don’t know? Would you be courageous enough to do the same? In James 1:17, we read, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (NIV). Paul explains that the love of God is “poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:5), even in the hearts of non-Christians, who sometimes are more loving and thoughtful than many Christians.

As Christians, we should be first and foremost in demonstrating Christ’s selfless love and compassion to the world.

Christ’s commandment for us today is to “love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34, 35). Let’s choose to reflect the light of the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2) to all around us.