I recently listened to a speech by Peter Singer, the world’s most influential living philosopher, according to The New Yorker. Much of our compassion and charity is misguided, Singer argued. We should be focusing on how to do the most good for the most people.

As an example, Singer mentioned the noble cause of providing seeing-eye dogs for the blind. It takes $40,000 to train the dog and the recipient, whereas a treatment costing just fifty dollars would cure a person of the eye disease trachoma in an under-served country. How can we justify training a dog for one American blind person when the same money would prevent blindness in eight hundred people elsewhere?

That kind of cold logic makes disturbingly good sense—until you attempt to apply it consistently. Last year Thailand mounted a massive operation, involving 10,000 people, to rescue twelve young soccer players trapped in a cave. Why not let the twelve boys die, and use that amount of money to feed the hungry? And how can we justify expensive medical treatments—for cancer, or infertility, or keeping premature babies alive—when, as Singer proposes, the same money invested in malarial nets would do more good for more people?

This philosopher, who wrote the main article on ethics in the Encyclopedia Britannica, has also suggested that “defective” newborns and some adults no longer qualify as persons and could be euthanized. Even so, he continued to support his mother financially after she showed signs of dementia. “I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really very difficult,” Singer told one interviewer. “It is different when it’s your mother.”

Listening to Singer, I thought back to my time working with Dr. Paul Brand, my coauthor on three books. Paul and his wife Margaret, also a physician, devoted their careers to helping leprosy patients in India. A few pennies a day can arrest leprosy’s progress with sulfone drugs. But it requires thousands of dollars, and the care of skilled professionals, to rehabilitate a patient in whom the disease has spread unchecked.

Paul Brand experimented with tendon and muscle transfers until he found the very best combination to restore movement to paralyzed claw-hands. Surgeries and physical therapy stretched over months and sometimes years as he applied similar procedures to feet. Restored feet and hands gave leprosy patients the capability to earn a living, yet soon they faced a new problem. Who would hire an employee bearing the scars of the dread disease?

Paul and Margaret Brand worked together to correct other damage caused by the disease. They learned to remake a human nose by building up a new nasal structure from the inside with bone transplants. They sought to prevent blindness by restoring the ability to blink. Leprosy deadens the tiny pain cells that prompt a healthy person to blink several times a minute, and eventually the dryness leads to blindness. Margaret learned to redirect a muscle that is normally used for chewing, tunneling it up under the cheek and attaching it to the upper eyelid. By chewing gum all day long, her patients simultaneously moved their eyelids up and down, lubricating the eyes and thus averting blindness.

All this elaborate medical care went to “nobodies,” often from the Untouchable caste, many of whom had subsisted by begging. Some who arrived at the hospital barely looked human. Their shoulders slumped, they cringed when other people approached. A year or so later these patients, Lazarus-like, would walk out of the hospital and proudly head off to learn a trade.

After working with Dr. Brand, I realized that I had been seeing large human problems in a statistical model: percentages of Gross National Product, average annual income, mortality rate, doctors-per-thousand of population. Love, however, is not statistical; we can never precisely calculate the greatest possible good to apply equally to the world’s poor and needy. We can only seek out one person, and then another, and then another, as objects for God’s love.

I have been updating and revising my writings with Dr. Brand in a new book to be released this fall, Fearfully and Wonderfully: The Marvel of Bearing God’s Image. Here is how Dr. Brand expresses his own philosophy, so different from Peter Singer’s:

I have sometimes wondered why Jesus so frequently touched the people he healed, many of whom must have been unattractive, obviously diseased, unsanitary, smelly. He could have waved a magic wand, which would have affected more people than he could personally touch. He could have divided the crowd into affinity groups and organized his miracles—paralyzed people over there, feverish people here, people with leprosy there—raising his hands to heal each group efficiently, en masse. Instead, he chose a different style.

Jesus’ mission was not chiefly a crusade against disease (if so, why did he leave so many unhealed in the world and tell followers to hush up details of his miracles?) but rather a ministry to individual people, some of whom happened to have a disease. He wanted those people, one by one, to feel his love and compassion. Jesus knew he could not readily demonstrate love to a crowd, for love usually involves touching.

I was privileged to know Mother Teresa, who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Calcutta among members of India’s lowest castes. Her order of sisters sought out the sick and dying in the streets and garbage dumps of Calcutta’s alleys, and among these were beggars deformed by leprosy. Several times I consulted with her on the proper treatment of the disease.

The Missionaries of Charity carry on her work today. When they find beggars in the street, they bring them to the clinic and surround them with love. Smiling women daub at their sores, clean off layers of grime, and swaddle the patients in soft sheets. The beggars, often too weak to talk, stare wide-eyed at this seemingly misdirected care. Have they died and gone to heaven? Why this sudden outpouring of love, why the warm, nutritious broth being gently spooned into their mouths?

A newsman in New York once confronted Mother Teresa with those very questions. He seemed pleased with his journalistic acumen. Why indeed should she expend her limited resources on people for whom there was no hope? Why not attend to people worthy of rehabilitation? What kind of success rate could her clinic show when most of its patients died in a matter of days or weeks?

Mother Teresa stared at him in silence, absorbing the questions, trying to comprehend what kind of a person would ask them. She had no answers that would make sense to him, so she said softly, “These people have been treated all their lives like dogs. Their greatest disease is a sense that they are unwanted. Don’t they have the right to die like angels?”

Another journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, struggled with the same questions. He observed firsthand the poverty of Calcutta and returned to England to write about it with fire and indignation. But, he comments, the difference between his approach and Mother Teresa’s was that he returned to England while she stayed in Calcutta. Statistically, he admits, she did not accomplish much by rescuing stragglers from a sump of human need. He concludes with the statement, “But then Christianity is not a statistical view of life.”

Indeed it is not. Not when a shepherd barely shuts the gate on his ninety-nine before rushing out, heartbroken and short of breath, to find the one that’s missing. Not when a laborer hired for only one hour receives the same wage as an all-day worker (Matthew 20:1–16). Not when one rascal decides to repent and ninety-nine upstanding citizens are ignored as all heaven erupts in a great party (Luke 15:4–7). God’s love, agape love, is not statistical either.

 

 

 

 

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54 responses to “Statistical Love”

  1. LikelyYou.com says:

    Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love. Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud

  2. Cindy López says:

    About yout post of homosexuality on 2009, I do not understand if you believe that gay marriage is right toward God´s eyes , and the fact of they to adopt kids

  3. Georgia Wessling says:

    This reply to Tim Weidlich is also what happened to me. I was raised in the Church of God in Anderson, IN. They have a program called Children of Promise. They help us to be able to help children overseas. I support 7 in 5 countries. One lady here in the town I live in told me I should not be supporting children overseas, but those in the U.S. That would be hard for me to do. I support these 7 children for $32 a month. For that, they get food before school, school uniforms and their education. I could hardly support one child in the US for this amount.

    Also, off the subject, I have just started rereading your book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace.” It reminded me of something God did for me over 40 years ago. I discovered that God can give us answers that others may not get. I was devastated by the backstabbing by friends at the time. God kept bugging me to forgive them. I was certain I couldn’t. It took me some time to do it. But I was absolutely shocked. I have always wonder how God could forget our sins when He had perfect memory. But I found out. I never forgot what they did to me, but when I told God I would forgive them, the most wonderful thing happened. He took all the pain away and, though I could remember it, there was just happiness. I stayed casual friends with them, but all the pain was gone. Since that time, forgiveness has come so easily to me. I have had very few times to forgive much because God had given me a wonderful answer. Grace does work in different ways for different people, but each solution is wonderful.

    • Philip Yancey says:

      Wonderful expression of forgiveness. Lewis Smedes wrote an entire book about the difference in forgiving and forgetting (Forgive and Forget). I also highly recommend Miroslav Volf’s The End of Memory.

  4. SARAH LATIMER says:

    My dear Phillip,

    Am I misreading this blog, or are you falling prey to a false dichotomy? It would seem that you are conflating the rigid approach, on the one had, of Mr. Singer’s attack on the extravagant inefficiency of seeing-eye dogs with a more nuanced approach: that of using the God-given tool of mathematics to take dominion over a fallen creation, while admitting to God’s care for each human, not only humans in aggregate. In fact, as we all know, statistics have been a tool for immeasurable good: public-health initiatives; mental-health funding; and, my personal favorite, scientific advancement. As you pointed out, statistics have also helped us in missionary endeavors. They have been used (for good or ill, depending on your perspective) in church-growth models, and in feeding the hungry and eradicating disease. Statistics are currently being used to address the soul- and body-crushing poverty in undeveloped nations. Ought we to stop? Ought we to disparage and discourage our mathematically-equipped brethren, and redirect them into sacrificial lives spent one-on-one with the dying? Ought we to redirect the Missionaries of Charity into addressing the root societal and governmental problems which lead to untouchable poor in Kolkata? Does the existence of mathematical models of ministry exist as an attack on ministries like Mother Teresa’s?

    These rhetorical questions brought to you by one who never liked the popular parable of babies in the river, and the “obvious” choice to defer pulling babies out downstream in favor of finding who upstream is tossing them in. What is Jesus’ call on my life? Both.

    Yours sincerely,

    Sarah Latimer

    • Philip Yancey says:

      You express the dichotomy very well. I completely agree with the value of a statistical approach, and Peter Singer makes a strong case for the great good done by charitable work by the Gates Foundation and Warren Buffet. Yet we dare not lose the supreme value of every human life, and it’s a slippery slope to mathematically determine which diseases or disabilities are “worth” addressing over others. Thank you for the redress.

  5. Wendy Spencer says:

    Oh, Philip Yancey, how grateful I am God gave you the gift of words.
    There is not one post of yours I read where I am not in tears. Or sobbing.
    This is an impactful post. Thank you for being a deep thinker of such issues and sharing your thoughts with us.
    How I long to be as self-less as Mother Teresa was.
    And may God continue to bless us through you.
    Sincerely, Wendy.

  6. Suwandy says:

    Thank you for sharing these words and opening my eyes to what is essentially God’s heart for the world.

    This is exactly the sentiment that was echoed in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that whomsoever believed in Him may not die but have eternal life.” Many people have no trouble believing this verse that “God so loved the world”. Yet that very same people struggle when they were asked, “Do you believe that God so loved YOU?”. God’s love is widespread, and at the same time it is personal. He loved the world, and He loved you.

    God’s love is not statistical. Powerful truth. Thanks so much Philip.

  7. Ann O'Malley says:

    “Why not attend to people worthy of rehabilitation?” It’s so easy to fall into this type of thinking, even in regard to salvation. Does God really save people by undeserved grace or does He only go after the most worthy? Even though I know the answer, I sometimes catch myself thinking of the “good soil” in Jesus’ parable as people who are already somewhat worthy. Those who have their act together and are just waiting for someone to invite them into the club, who have at least partially earned a place in heaven because they are good soil rather than being hard or rocky or thorny.

    And yet Jesus says things like, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened” (Matthew 11:28 NIV). Would good soil feel weary and burdened? Or “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). Is He really saying that the sick and the sinners are the good soil that He’s looking for? How do you grow fruit in that kind of dirt? (Adapted from my blog at https://thosewhoweep.blogspot.com/2019/03/good-soil.html.)

    I love this God whose love is not statistical, who reaches out to those that I prefer to pass by, not just those that I would consider worthy. I know He’s real because none of us would or could invent such a God.

  8. John Bouton says:

    Thank you for allowing God to use you to talk with all of us. I finally accepted Jesus at age 60 after seeing The Passion. Since that time, I have had a concern that “I’m not doing enough for others” . ( I do always ask God through Christ to witness/help my family & neighbors). And I have not received a call from Him to do anything else.) Now I understand why & I’m at peace. Thank you Father & you.

  9. Mynda B says:

    Love this and your views. Thank you for continuing to write and share with the world. Seeing all the hurt and evil around us can get overwhelming. Katie Davis in her book “Kisses from Katie” talked about ministering to all of the overwhelming needs she saw and how she learned to just love the first one in front of her and then the next one and the next one. Thankful we have a shepherd that cared about the “one” as well. Keep those books coming! Your words are needed.

  10. Mary Jane Horst says:

    Thank you. I work with old people in a care home, and during what are sometimes long stretches of boredom and seeming meaninglessness, I ask myself, “Am I doing enough? What AM I doing? The lights are on here and nobody is home! How can this be enough?”

    Your post is so comforting, and timely beyond belief.

  11. Ivan Diaz says:

    I see no hope. I contemplate to committing suicide. That’s the only clear and logical answer to my worthless existence.

    Until I read your books and blogs, now I feel encouraged and I can sense a small fragrance of hope. For sure, I still get my ‘dark days’ every now and then. But I am more confident now that I can pull it through one day at a time knowing God’s unconditional love .

    Thank you Mr Yancey, for ministering to my soul through your heartfelt and wise writings.

    • Philip Yancey says:

      Please do not give up. Count on that unconditional love from God, and I pray that you can find a community of believers who can make it known to you. No one’s existence is worthless; we are children of God.

  12. Fred Bailey says:

    First, thank you for engaging me in the deliberation over measuring and quantifying God’s endless love. We often have difficulties with the conundrums presented by trying to comprehend and articulate that which exceeds our understanding. The story of the prodigal son seemed so misguided to me when I looked at it with my eyes, my soul, my heart, instead of the Lord’s.
    Praise be to God.

  13. Colin Bennett says:

    I don’t think Christianity has a monopoly on human morality or that religion is the domain of human goodness. In fact, I think the opposite is the case.

  14. Dave Allburn says:

    (Well, you’re my favorite author, but now I have a favorite photographer: L. Scott Johnson. If a photographer can make an Einstein lookalike appear tidy and handsome like that, he’s a real pro!)
    ————-
    Governments are forced to categorize in order to proclaim policy success, so theirs is a forced “statistical view of life.” Such “proof-truth” speaks to mind, not to heart, so when applied to social justice issues it is easy to depict the statistical view as heartless, which of course Hollywood and Opposition Researchers exploit to heartless excess.
    Jesus is anything but heartless. He embodies the opposite. In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1970 rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Judas character anguishes over this contrast of efficient social justice with a statistical view, versus dramatic personal ministry-by-example…to great dramatic effect.
    I anguish over it too. But as a STEM-trained business owner and 77-year old elder, I don’t get to indulge in any drama. That’s your department. So as my favorite author I politely…or not…ask you to CRANK IT UP, BUBBA: Mirror Judas’ angst in your next book or screenplay as a means to chart us a path through today’s minefield of truthiness, fake news, clickbait, and echo chambers. Others use vague bumper sticker slogans like “follow the cross.” You won’t. With all implications intended, I look to you for a “Brand’s-on” approach.

  15. Judi says:

    “But then Christianity is not a statistical view of life.”…..and I am so very grateful. For if it was, where would we all be? Thank you Lord.

  16. Jim Rudat says:

    Thank you for sharing your unique insights and perspectives! Always food for thought!

  17. Wanjiru says:

    This is indeed the love of Christ that seeks out the “one” who is in need of salvation and deliverance. Thank you so much for this piece.

  18. Abraham Pulickal says:

    Awesome thought Philip. Really encouraging. Truly God’s agape love in unconditional and is definitely not statistical. May the Lord turn our hearts too to be someone like Him as were Dr. Paul & Mother Teresa . God Bless.

  19. my name held back for obvious reasons. says:

    Fascinating teaser on the forthcoming book, much needed for my understanding and spiritual formation at 63 years. Eagerly looking forward to the book for renewal.
    I’m still struggling with the inability to comprehend why my elder brother continues to suffer as schizophrenic, remains mentally ill, in spite of our own family prayers and Godly folks praying . It’s haunting my 90 year old mother, who continues to care for him faithfully at her home, while I wrestle with a need to care for my only child, wrestling with a college going child battling depression and other issues.
    I have no answer for both.

  20. Steve Kamerick says:

    The measure that God loves me and Jesus paid for the penalty of my sins and selfishness causes me to take the same care and attention as a life of thanksgiving. Thank you Philip for your work, your ministry and your loving thoughts shared with all of us who also care about you. Looking forward to the next book.

  21. Ed Wandling says:

    I recently listened to Singer expound upon these ideas without thinking them through. I’m grateful you did give it thought and shared those thoughts. Successful business people to whom I pay attention regularly exhort entrepreneurs to do things that “don’t scale – to “add value” to others by giving them individual attention even when the numbers don’t add up. Perhaps a more helpful way to think would be to recognize value in others and respond accordingly. Either way, if business leaders can see the importance of valuing and serving individuals even when the numbers don’t make sense, shouldn’t we? We understand every individual, regardless of any qualifier you want to use, is uniquely created by God in the image of God, is fearfully and wonderfully made, and is loved by God. Our response needs to be to recognize that value and respond in love, even if the numbers don’t make sense on some imaginary spread sheet.

  22. Jujie Agudo says:

    “The needs of the one outweighs that needs of the many.” I’ve often wondered what this statement from Star Trek really meant until I read your article on “Statistical Love.” I think I understand it better now. Thanks for the insight.

  23. David K. Sallee says:

    When I responded to a call into Campus Ministry in 1986 I was haunted by the question, Why Is Christ calling me to reach out to middle class college students instead of the many suffering in poverty just 35 miles South of our campus in Juarez, Mexico? After sage counsel from peers, friends, many of your books (especially Disappointment with God), from mission trips much further South in Mexico, retreats and prayer I finally found a peace that evolved into a song, “Love the Ones I Send You” for our Praise band CD years later that included the words
    “What am I to do, Lord, to praise you with each breath?
    Where am I to go, Lord, for your Kingdom here on Earth?
    CHORUS
    He says,
    “You don’t have to travel far to please me, precious child,
    Just love the ones I send you with the love that sent my son.
    You don’t have to do it all to please me precious son,
    Just give the ones I send you the love that gave my child.”
    – 1997, It was “Dedicated to the ones he’s sent” those college student who continue to inspire me in retirement as they also learn to Love the ones Christ has put upon their hearts.

  24. Jujie Agudo says:

    “The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.” I’ve often wondered what this statement from Star Trek really meant until I read your article on Statistical Love. I understand it a bit more now. Thank you for the insight.

  25. K.C. Lowe says:

    Dear Mr. Yancey,
    I have enjoyed your writing and observations for many years. After reading your response to Rick Jebb, “My too-long drafts had to go through a radical slim-down program”, I believe it would be better (and more fruitful) to have more than just one book of your memoirs. Would your publisher consider a two- or three-volume set, please?

    • Philip Yancey says:

      That idea did occur to me at one point. Right now I’m working on the first book, and will see how that goes.

  26. Michèle Gyselinck says:

    I thought philosophers were supposed to love wisdom, but I don’t see much wisdom in this cold-hearted conception of charity. Why does it have to be an either/or proposition? Two wrongs don’t make a right. This man seems disconnected from humanity ; he shows no empathy or compassion for his fellow suffering human beings. Another egghead alone in his ivory tower.

  27. Avenel Grace says:

    The Lord who healed the \leper
    Is looking on thee now,
    And though thy case discerning,
    No frown is on His brow
    Not all thy sin’s dark story
    Could turn away His love;
    T’was need like thine that brought Him
    Down from His throne above.
    Phillip, as you know my “son J Aiyer “who passed away in May 2017 at 38 years old, worked with these people. I was thrilled to be sent a photo recently of one of his former students using the wall of an overpass as a black board to teach a group of these poor children. I also found out that his unique method of teaching is being v=carried out in several cities in South America, and in Thailand. God is honoring his servant in the continuance of his work.

  28. Lynn says:

    I loved the first Fearfully and Wonderfully Made book. It transformed me because I had such a bad self image and was considered “ugly” during school years. I studied nursing and used the book in some of my papers and I gave a talk on this book at my local church in my early 20’s. And I have referenced it many times over the years. I’ll look forward to the updated version. God used this book in my life. Thank you.

  29. Diane Margherio says:

    I am 68 years old. Over the years God has sent people to me, one at a time, who were hurting and in need. Until a few years ago I wondered always what God wanted of me (besides raising my big family). It finally dawned on me that taking care of those individual people He put in my way was what He was asking.

    Thank you for your wonderful books. They bring me closer to God.

  30. Lavinia says:

    This message is one that all of us need to hear, then follow the example of Jesus as he lived and moved around in the space he was planted showing us His gospel in action. May we not be timid or afraid to carry this gospel of love to a world that so desperately needs it. Thank you, Philip, for these words of wisdom. LRH

  31. Eddie Chu says:

    Thanks for sharing the fallacies of “statistical love”. I posted your article on my FB, something I don’t do often. If the hundreds of millions of Christian can each do one millionth of what Mother Teresa did (not everyone of us can be Dr. Brand), we will have hundreds of Mother Teresas! That will change history.

  32. Tim Weidlich says:

    I started a ministry to Ethiopia widows and orphans through a Church in Montana. As I shared the vision I would have people tell me they would not participate in something like this overseas as long as there was so much poverty in the U.S. Your blog reminded me that God invests His love into me even when the profit & loss statement doesn’t make any sense. Seems like the message of Psalm 8:3-4 “what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?” I often wonder that myself, but I don’t want to let that keep me from accepting and enjoying that love.

  33. Barbara Larson says:

    Dear Philip,
    Remember the heart-breaking story of little Alfie and his parents who weren’t allowed to leave England, even when Italy offered to help, despite the fact that the child would die without additional treatment? Too expensive, they said. If only someone with power in England thought like you, Drs. Brand, Mother Teresa, and Jesus, and insisted that surely there was enough wealth in their nation to lavish on this sick child.

  34. Bill Scully says:

    The last paragraph was breathtaking. Thank you, Philip, once again.

  35. Sue Markley says:

    Dear Mr. Yancey,
    I have enjoyed reading your books and especially love your notes in “The Student Bible.” I have shared that version of the Bible with many folks. I also look forward to your blogs. This particular one was extremely helpful to me and has caused me to rethink how to put my Christian faith in to action…one person, with love, at a time. Thank you, again for your “eye opening” writings.
    Sincerely,
    Sue Markley

  36. Claudia says:

    Wow! Thank you, Phillip, for explaining this so beautifully, for giving us words for our emotions and feelings as we wrestle to interpret the contrasting views of this world vs. God’s on issues of “wasting” resources and love. Like the Pharisees complaining about the waste of Mary pouring an expensive perfume at Jesus’ feet, we often struggle to reconcile what makes sense in our eyes and what truly matters to God.
    Thank you for your blogs and your books, they are always so insightful!

  37. Alice Ellis says:

    A breath of fresh air in a time we are bombarded by numbers and statistics to support a perspective. On the landscape of faith, it really is about Jesus’ perspective where every person is valuable…even the ones identified by numbers (no names)- the homeless, the drug addict, the prisoner, the refugee. I pray my feet and hands will return to God’s work founded on the bedrock of love and this Jesus message will touch others: one-by-one.

  38. Mart says:

    So true to the wonder! Thank you, Philip

  39. Rick Jebb says:

    Brilliant, relevant and practical is the perspective of the Holy Spirit, it seems it must be incalculable to the most calculating of human minds.

    Phil – how are you? How is the memoir going?

    I’m still rewriting mine though my agent finally said my proposal was a go 45 days ago.

    • Philip Yancey says:

      The memoir is chugging along. My too-long drafts had to go through a radical slim-down program. I hope to be finished this year, with publication maybe in 2020. –Philip

  40. Nicola says:

    Unlike those who would save the many, which actually was the justification for Jesus death. Jesus Himself always went after the one. I wonder if that man who uses logic would’ve feel the same if it were his daughter/son/ wife who would be passed by for the ‘many’
    I have a guide dog. He is right. They cost an average of £38.000 pounds by the time they die.
    At the end of the day, it is like Gandalf Said, ‘ MAny who die deserve life, and those who live deserve death. IS it up to you to give it to them?Only God knows all ends. Only God knows truly what suffering is for all of us, and what and why. I may not be worth much in that mans eyes. Clearly. But that ‘clearly’ desicsion made by him, nearly shows how blind he is. Who is he to judge what is worthy and who is not? Because it was God that gave me my first guide dog. Why? I am just one. But God thought I was worth much. If we would look at the root problem clearly it is that money goes to the wrong places, it is this mans thinking that is destroying. By judging with the worlds eyes…. People suffer. NEedlessly. It is up to each of us to choose. To love our neighbour as we love ourselves. When we do this, the world will change.

  41. Abel says:

    It is an encouragement for me to follow the footsteps of Jesus.

  42. Ken Kemp says:

    Beautiful. What a powerful time it was, to work at Dr. Brand’s side, and to write with him. I’ll look forward to the release of Fearfully and Wonderfully, good friend.

  43. Very excited that your work with Dr. Brand is being re-visited!
    Looking forward to a re-read this summer!

  44. Sandra Bryant says:

    Thank you.

  45. Marlene Toews Janzz9en says:

    Beautiful. I struggle with the same questions during annual 6-week volunteer stints of teaching English in Cairo. Outside of my work I have come to know a few small projects where a few local Christians are involved. I sometimes wonder how effective this is. But I believe it matters because it matters to the stigmatized disabled or orphan/abandoned children they serve. Statistically, if all of us, the world’s wealthy privileged people (like me), would commit to smaller or bigger tasks and sharemre of our wealth and skills, I believe we would see many more miracles around the world. Thank you again for this.

  46. Susie Boer says:

    Getting to know Margaret Brand in the last three years of her life was one of my greatest joys. Thank you for relating the beauty of the Brands’ work so movingly.

  47. Judith Flickinger says:

    Wow! What a testimony for God’s grace. Love it.

  48. Paulette Woods says:

    Powerful words! I can’t wait for your revised “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made” Thank you for bearing the torch!
    Paulette Woods

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