Unlikely Heros

 

One June day in a quiet suburb on the west side of Chicago, Jim Partridge was enjoying a relaxing afternoon. Then, out of the blue, he heard a series of hair-raising screams. Jim and his wife Sue knew instantly that someone was in serious need. The screams were coming from a neighboring house on the other side of an open lot and a row of trees that separated their houses. They barely knew the people who lived there but they responded to help. Sue got there first and shouted back, “Hurry Jim! It’s the baby!” After Jim made his way up the stairs and onto the deck he found his neighbor, Tammy Kroll, kneeling over the lifeless body of her one-year-old daughter. Tammy had moments earlier found her daughter floating face down in the family backyard pool. The Partridge’s rushed into action. While Sue called 911, Jim began administering first aid. He cleared the little girl’s airway and began CPR. He observed she was not breathing at all, she had no pulse, her eyes were rolled back, and she was blue all over. As Jim worked the minutes felt like hours. Nearly ten minutes had passed when he heard the encouraging sound of sirens in the distance. Then he heard a more encouraging sound as he put his ear to the little girl’s chest – a heartbeat. Little Jennifer Kroll was rushed to a local hospital where she made a full recovery and was back home in just a few days. Jim Partridge certainly acted heroically that day, but what is most impressive is how unlikely a hero he was. Decades earlier, as an eighteen-year-old Marine in Vietnam, Jim stepped on a land mine which detonated. The explosion blew off both of his legs above the knees and left him nearly blind. That day, Jim fumbled his way through the thick empty lot on his wheelchair. When he got to the trees, he had to abandon his chair to crawl on his hands. As he made his way to the backyard, he had to pull himself up each step of the deck that surrounded the pool. One of the things that exemplifies Jim’s heroism was his willingness to yield to the temptation to excuse himself. It would have been easy and tempting for him to say, “Let somebody else do it. I’m legally blind, and I don’t have any legs!” How often do you and I excuse ourselves from recuing people who are drowning in a sea of sin? There are people all around us who are spiritually dead, but they can be brought back to life through the hope of the gospel (Ephesians 2:1-5; Colossians 2:11-14). Are you making excuses for not saving those around you? “…save with fear, pulling them out of the fire…” (Jude 23).

[James 4:7-8] “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Some of us have tried to have a daily quiet time and have not been successful. Others of us have a tough time concentrating. And all of us are busy. So rather than spend time with God, listening for His voice, and meditating on His Word, we let others spend time with Him, then benefit from their experiences – let them tell us what God is saying. After all, isn’t that why we pay preachers? If that is your approach, if your spiritual experiences are just second-hand and not your own, I’d like to challenge you to this thought: Do you do that with any other part of your life? You don’t have others take your vacation trips and then tell you about them, do you? You don’t rely on someone else to romance your spouse, do you? Does anyone eat your meals on your behalf? There are certain things that no one else can do for you. One of them is spending time with God. You need spiritual nourishment, and nobody can fill up on His Word for you. You must consume that yourself. Don’t rely on second-hand spirituality – that is no spirituality at all. Jesus came to our rescue – He has saved us from hell (Romans 5:6-11).