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Blog 498 – 12.18.2016
Words And Acts Of Love

I consider myself a romantic and it seems I have always been on the look out for words and acts of love. Since my boyhood when I first saw movies like “Old Yeller” and “The Biscuit Eater” both love stories involving the most loving creatures on the planet – dogs. I have been a sucker for a good love story. I confess that I have shed many a tear in the dark watching tender acts and words of love on the silver screen. A few years ago, “The Blindside” a Sandra Bullock movie was being previewed in several of the movies that I saw. I knew that I would have to see it because I could not even watch the preview without crying my heart out. The tender love that a upper middle class southern white family showed to a very poor almost grown young black man touched me very much.

I told you I was a tender hearted romantic. I have read most everything that Nicholas Sparks ever wrote. If you have not read his books please do. You probably already know several of the movie adaptations of his books – Note In A Bottle, The Notebook, A Walk To Remember, or more recently The Lucky One, The Best Of Me, and The Longest Ride. A good love story makes a wonderful book and or movie, I think. Another of my favorite writers Dean Koontz writes horror stories but it is the love stories hidden in the gore and frightfulness that touches me most. I saw a few days ago that the movie Gone With The Wind is still the top box office grossing movie of all time. I have read the book three times and seen the movie more times than I can keep track. There are some racist remarks and attitudes in the book that still offend me but it is the love stories in the book and movie that still touch me. About the same time that I first read Gone With The Wind for the first time I also read The Cross And The Switchblade for the first time. It was during my eleven month long summer vacation to South Vietnam that took place during most of my last year as a teenager.

David Wilkerson, the Author of The Cross And The Switchblade, was a young pastor who drove to New York City to try to help some young gang members accused of murder that he had read about. He was not able to do much for those boys. The were found to be guilty of a horrendous and calloused murder of another teen but while trying to help them he was introduced to some other teens in gangs that he thought he might be able to help. Dave Wilkerson started a ministry called Teen Challenge that has helped thousands of teenagers get free of drugs and gangs and continues that great work today.

One of the first teen gang bangers that Dave set out to win was Nicky Cruz, a gang leader. Nicky was tough and hard on the outside and grew weary and agitated with Dave’s message about the love of God. Nicky said to him, “Preacher, if you say one more word to me about Jesus, I am going to take this Switchblade knife and cut you into a thousand pieces.” Dave Wilkerson replied in some of the most inspired words that I ever read, “And if you do, Nicky, every piece will lay there loving you.” Love won Nicky Cruz’s  heart and he switched his gang affiliation. Rather, he got out of the drug business, the fighting, gang banging business and joined The Family Business, Loving, Inc. Nicky Cruz has been able to reach far more gang members than David Wilkerson ever could have. But I am sure that Nicky would agree that it was Love that did the reaching, the touching, the changing. It still does today. And you don’t even have to put a little love in your heart for it is already there. Just let it out.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White