In May 2018, a 22-year-old undocumented migrant from Mali was walking down a Paris street when he saw a crowd staring up at a four-year-old boy dangling from a fourth-floor balcony. Mamoudou Gassama had every reason to keep his head down and avoid attention. Instead he ran across the road and pulled himself up the outside of the building, balcony to balcony, and lifted the crying child to safety. He later said, “I just climbed up and thank God, God helped me. The more I climbed the more I had the courage to climb up higher.” President Macron gave him a medal for courage and said he would be made a French citizen. Courage grows as you take the next step.
In September 1944, while she was pregnant, Danish rider Lis Hartel developed polio. For a while she could not walk at all. She learned to walk again with braces, but she stayed partially paralyzed below her knees. Still, she kept riding. In 1952 women were allowed to compete in Olympic dressage for the first time, and Hartel went to Helsinki. She had to be helped on and off her horse, yet she won the silver medal behind Sweden’s Henri Saint Cyr. At the victory ceremony, the gold medalist helped her climb up onto the podium. Four years later the same two riders finished first and second again. Strength is wonderful, but so is the champion who reaches down and lifts a rival up beside him.
When Handel’s Messiah first played in London, it was not a hit. Some people thought a sacred work did not belong in a theater. Then the Foundling Hospital, a new home for abandoned children, needed help. Handel gave a benefit concert there in 1749, then in 1750 performed Messiah for the charity. It was so oversubscribed that wealthy supporters were turned away, and he had to repeat it two weeks later. From then on Messiah was performed every year for the children’s benefit, raising about 7,000 pounds. Handel even left a copy of the score to the hospital in his will. Some say without those orphans, Messiah might have faded. Generosity can give your gift a life you never imagined.
Dwight L. Moody came to Chicago selling shoes, dreaming of making a fortune of $100,000. But after he came to faith, it slowly dawned on him that his life should be spent helping people instead of piling up wealth. In 1858 he started a mission Sunday school in a Chicago slum. He drew poor immigrant children with candy and pony rides, and reached their parents through prayer meetings and English classes. By 1861 he had left business behind to focus on the work. Moody was convinced, “If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him.” People rarely care how much you know until they see how much you care.
In October 1860, an eleven-year-old girl named Grace Bedell in Westfield, New York saw a picture of Abraham Lincoln and wrote him a letter. She told him his face was so thin that if he let his whiskers grow, he would look a great deal better, and she would try to get her brothers to vote for him. Four days later, Lincoln wrote back. He was gracious, though he wondered if people might call it silly to start a beard now. Yet when he stopped in Westfield in February 1861 on the way to his inauguration, he wore a full beard and met his young correspondent. Never think your voice is too small to matter.
