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Key Bible Verse: Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth (1 John 3:18). Bonus Reading: 1 John 3:16-17

The film The Bridge on the River Kwai won an Academy Award yet missed the real story. In his book, Through the Valley of the Kwai, Ernest Gordon, a company commander, describes the Chungkai camp as marked by despair. The veneer of civilization had been peeled back, exposing a community filled with hatred and hopelessness. "When a man lay dying [and] cried for our help, we averted our heads. Cursing became … an obsession."

Stricken with amoebic dysentery, malaria and diphtheria, Gordon was dying like hundreds before him. The difference for Gordon, and eventually the whole camp, was two men—"Dusty" Miller and "Dinty" Moore. They washed Gordon's wounds, attended to his sores, shared their own meager rations and massaged his lifeless legs.

As the story of this and other acts of self-sacrifice circulated around the camp, the Spirit of God began to move. Groups studied the life of Jesus. Men started to treat one another with respect and love. Creative minds devised anesthetics from plants and artificial limbs from bamboo. The prisoners established a university, a 40-piece orchestra, and a church without walls.

—Art Athenst in Command

• What can you do to bring a new spirit to your work environment?

Thought to Apply: Never allow the thought, "I am of no use where I am." You certainly can be of no use where you are not.

—OSWALD CHAMBERS (World War I chaplain)

Credits: Adapted from —Friday: Command (10/98)

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity. For reprint information click here.

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Prayer for the Week

Jesus, open my eyes to the needs of Your hurting children. Stretch out my hands to touch them. ell.

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