Brotherly Love

The actor Bill Murray has often struggled to walk down the street without people wanting to get his phot. Sadly, he confessed that he often acted like a jerk. Murray said.

People would say, “Can I take your picture?” And I would be the kind of [jerk] that would say, “It’s ‘May I take your picture?’” Do you know how many times I said that to no avail? Absolutely no avail. But I wasted a whole lot of time that way, doing stuff to make it acceptable on my stupid terms, trying to make life more like I like it. What a screw head. So now what I do for a living is, I take cellphone photographs. I’m not an actor. I am a donkey that is photographed with people who don’t know how to operate their own cellphone camera. That’s what I do all day long. I don’t regret it. I don’t resent it. This is what I do, and it’s so simple, and I’ve realized how much energy I was wasting resisting it. It was just crazy, and when it finally hit me, I went: Oh, my God, what a jerk. How could you have been a jerk for that long?

Then during the interview Murray started tearing up.

Did you know horses have friends? They do according to writer Sterry Butcher, who lives on a Texas farm with horses.

According to Butcher, horses form friendships, and these friends stand nose to rump to cooperatively swish flies from the other’s face with their tails. They’ll rake their teeth against the other’s withers or back, scratching places the other cannot reach on his own.

And not only do horses scratch each other’s back. They watch each other’s back. In the wild, they spend the entirety of their lives within the eyesight of another horse. Even domestic horses, who don’t venture beyond their pasture, will take turns staying awake while others sleep. It’s like shifts on guard duty.

What horses have is what we need. Every one of us needs a friend. Someone who will swish away the annoying biting flies that come toward us in life. Someone who will scratch our back, helping us with the things we can’t reach or do on our own. Someone who will stay awake and protect us from dangers.

In Raymond Arsenault’s biography of John Lewis, he recounts Lewis’s mentors and their shared vision of “the Beloved Community.” Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis often spoke of “the Beloved Community,” which was “a philosophical theory and a call to service.”

At the successful conclusion of the yearlong boycott in December 1956, King quoted the Book of Matthew and urged the boycotters to “inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization.” “Love your enemies,” he recited, “bless them that curse you, pray for them who despitefully use you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.” “We must remember,” King continued, “… that a boycott is not an end within itself; it is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority. But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.”

Placing the goals of nonviolent direct action on such a high moral plane could be inspiring, drawing Lewis and many people of faith into the movement. But as the historian Mills Thornton has noted, King’s frequent allusions to the “beloved community” as a reachable promised land sometimes had the opposite effect, prompting more practical listeners to “dismiss it as a pipe dream.”

Silinia Pha Aphay was sprinting in the preliminary Olympic rounds of the 100-meter dash event, when something unexpected happened.

Aphay, who ran for her native Laos, must have felt a sense of solidarity with the other runners in the preliminary rounds. Alongside sprinters from Turkmenistan, Niger, Paraguay, South Sudan, Palau, and Congo, Aphay was not expected to contend for a medal, but simply to enjoy the prestige of competition and serve as an inspiration to others in her nation.

So, when she crossed the finish line, and heard the crowd reacting in dismay, she immediately turned around and saw one of her competitors, Lucia Moris of South Sudan, laying on the ground in agony. Without pausing, Aphay ran back to console her fellow racer, who was shrieking in pain and holding her right leg.

“We are athletes,” Aphay said. “All 100 meters athletes have to know how being hurt feels. And this is a big competition. It’s a big dream to come here. But you get hurt here. So, everybody knows the feeling.”

Ultimately, Aphay couldn’t do much to physically assist Moris. “Just cry out,” she told Maris. But she stayed with her fallen friend until medics came and placed her on a gurney.

“I can only share her pain.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we are present with those who are suffering, we model the love of Jesus, who reached out to the afflicted and downcast.

How many people do you know? You’ve probably never counted. Well, now you don’t have to. Tyler McCormick has worked it out: around 600.

Or more precisely 611, according to estimates by McCormick, a professor in the statistics and sociology departments at the University of Washington. That’s a national average, but McCormick can actually compute an estimate for you, or anyone.

Asked how many close friends they have, about half of Americans say three or fewer, according to a 2021 survey. The British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, drawing on studies of the brain sizes of humans and other primates, estimates a person can only maintain about 150 relationships. The so-called “Dunbar number,” he has said, “applies to quality relationships, not to acquaintances.” A Pew Research study found adults on Facebook had an average of 338 friends on the site.

The number of people you know, without considering them friends, is probably much larger. McCormick’s definition: “that you know them and they know you by sight or by name, that you could contact them, that they live within the United States, and that there has been some contact” in the past two years.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) As a negative illustration, this could show our need to develop deeper, more intimate friendships in the body of Christ. (2) As a positive illustration, this could reveal that our support system may be stronger and broader than we realize, especially in the church.

Marvin Gaye, one of the most legendary soul singers of the 20th century, produced a series of hit recordings before his untimely death in 1984 from gun violence. But now, 40 years later, the world may experience a new set of never-heard recordings from the singer. “We can open a time capsule here and share the music of Marvin with the world," says Belgian lawyer Alex Trappeniers.

Assuming, of course, that ongoing legal proceedings can resolve their legal ownership. Trappeniers is the attorney for the family of Charles Dumolin, with whom Gaye once lived. Gaye moved to Belgium in 1981, to escape a cocaine habit he’d picked up living in London. While living with Dumolin, Gaye regained his health, and returned to recording. Some of the recordings he made during that time have never been released, and their potential value has only skyrocketed in the decades since his death.

And since Gaye gave them to the family, Trappeniers says, they should remain the family’s estate. He said, “They belong to [the family] because they were left in Belgium 42 years ago. Marvin gave it to them and said, 'Do whatever you want with it' and he never came back.”

The problem is, the Belgian law that would support the family’s custodianship of the physical tapes does not necessarily apply to intellectual property contained therein. If the heirs of the Gaye estate lay a claim to his music, the family could possess the recordings without a legal right to release them commercially. The Gaye family could legally own the music, but have no access to the tapes that contain them. Without a resolution, a legal stalemate would result.

Trappeniers says some kind of compromise and collaboration is necessary to bring Gaye’s new music to life. “I think we both benefit, the family of Marvin and the collection in the hands of [Dumolin's heirs]. If we put our hands together and find the right people in the world, the Mark Ronsons, or the Bruno Mars. ... Let's listen to this and let's make the next album.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Cooperation; Partnership; Teamwork; Unity – Much can be accomplished in any area of society where there is collaboration instead of competitiveness. This is what Paul told the Corinthian church, “I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree together, so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be united in mind and conviction” (1 Cor. 1:10-17).

In 1939, Lloyd Dong and his family were having difficulty finding a place to live. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1884 and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 were part of a series of racially exclusive laws and ordinances designed to prevent Chinese immigrants like the Dongs from being able to successfully settle down. But the Dongs did eventually find a place, thanks to Emma and Gus Thompson, two Black entrepreneurs who first rented and then eventually sold a house in Coronado, California to the family.

That act of kindness helped the Dongs become a part of American society. Now, generations later, the Dongs want to honor the Thompsons by donating $5 million of the proceeds of the sale of that property to a scholarship fund for Black students. Lloyd Dong, Jr. said, “Without them, we would not have the education and everything else.”

Ron and his wife Janice are both retired educators who understand the value of education, which is why they’re also working to have the Black Resource Center at San Diego State University named after the Thompsons. Janice said, “It may enable some kids to go and flourish in college that might not have been able to otherwise.”

The Thompsons initial gesture of hospitality seems even more miraculous when you consider the context. Emma and Gus Thompson originally traveled to Coronado from Kentucky to work at a local hotel, and built their house in 1895, before many of the restrictive racial housing covenants were enacted. The Thompson’s property in Coronado originally featured a residence and a small boarding house on the upper floor of a barn, intentionally created to house vulnerable people with no other place to go.

Jo Von McCalester, a professor at Howard University, said, “It was just something understood that marginalized people in San Diego had to rely very heavily on one another. One family’s sacrifice can shape the lives of so many.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we pass on the generosity that we’ve received from others, we model the generous love of God who lavishes on all without regard for status, heritage, or bloodline.

A young woman named Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression. Her grandmother had just passed, and she was going through a dramatic break-up. She was teaching a dance class at this time, but without a driver’s license, she relied on a friend to drive her to and from work every week. One day however the friend didn’t show, and Belmont waited for hours before being forced to walk home.

The route she used went over a high bridge. And when she got there, she stopped for a moment. She said:

I was just having one of the worst days of my life. And I was looking down at all the cars, just feeling so useless and like such a burden to everyone in my life that I decided that this was the time and I needed to end my life. I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it, because I knew at that moment that it was going to make everyone’s lives better.

At that moment, a driver, whose face Belmont didn’t see, and whose hand she would never shake, passed over the bridge and hollered out of the window. “Don’t jump,” they said.

It immediately clicked a lightbulb went on in her head; that if a stranger could care enough to speak up, then suicide was not the answer. She enrolled in therapy, and with the help of her friends, family, and therapist, she is far down the road indeed from that dark and fateful day.

Belmont uses the incident as an example to teach others to be kind to people, as it’s never obvious what they’re going through. The smallest kindness is multiplied by the distance, socially, between two strangers.

Lew Wilcox and Bobby Rohrbach Jr. met in the summer of 1962, riding their bikes together in a small southern Ohio town.

These days, every Saturday, one picks the other up and they go out for breakfast, run errands, and talk about families, home repairs and how the world is changing. If one can’t remember a place or name, the other can fill in because they so often lived the same story. They didn’t outgrow the other or leave the other behind and still live within about five miles of their childhood homes. “I have a lot of friends but there’s something special about our friendship,” says Lew, 75, of his friend, Bobby, 73.

Yet as important as they are, people have fewer close friendships than they once did. Forty-percent of Americans say they don’t have a best friend at all, up from 25% in 1990. The best-friend gap is more pronounced for men, who typically have fewer close friends than women do. The percentage of men without any close friends jumped fivefold to 15% in 2021 from 3% in 1990, according to the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey.

Michael Addis, director of the Research Group on Men’s Well-Being, says, “We were taught for generations to focus on work, family, and productivity. Don’t share what is really going on inside with other men.”

Time together deepens bonds. Becoming a best friend takes 300 hours of togetherness, one study reported. Those fortunate enough to have friends through the decades develop a common history that fresh friendships often don’t.

For decades, Bob Barker ended each episode of the long-running game show The Price is Right the same way—urging viewers to spay or neuter their pets. It became something of a catchphrase. Actor and comedian Drew Carey has been hosting the show for over sixteen years, and he’s developed his own catchphrase. Carey offers, in a brief, firm cadence, a warm affirmation in three words: “I love you.”

Carey told CBS Chicago, “It’s a practice I got in my adult life. I treat everybody I meet with love, as if they were a friend already. And it really changes everything.”

The simple affirmation caught the attention of plenty of viewers, including Washington Post writer Travis Andrews. He writes, “We’re in a world that could use a little love from our screens, and Carey provides it—unjudging, unequivocally, unabashed.”

According to Andrews, the bleak state of world affairs has caused an uptick in “I love you” as a platonic affirmation, and cites several examples. One of which includes actors Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, who host the “Smartless” podcast together. They say it warmly to each other and to their guests at the end of episodes. Not “love you, bro” but “I love you.”

Perhaps the most unexpected “I love you”—and therefore the most moving—came from Norm Macdonald. The comedian always avoided sincerity. In his final appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” Norm dropped the veil for perhaps the first and only time, to address his hero directly. Norm said, “I know that Mr. Letterman is not for the mawkish, and he has no truck for the sentimental. But if something is true, it’s not sentimental.”

His voice cracked. “And I say, in truth, I love you.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is one of the truest ways to demonstrate that “God is love” (1 John 4:16), is to sincerely tell others that we love them. It is especially godly to show God’s love to those who have hurt us or who despise us (Matt. 4:44)

"My husband Jerry was a ginormous presence. Such a happy guy," said his wife, Lori Belum. "He did everything for us. And he just loved Christmas."

The Belums were married in 2010 and had two sons, Benjamin and Sammy. Both boys love playing flag football and their dad loved supporting them even more. But the day after Thanksgiving, right after Benjamin scored the game-winning touchdown, an unbelievable tragedy occurred on the sidelines. Lori said, “Jerry just collapsed ... and that was it. A ruptured aortic dissection is what they called it and it's pretty much instant death."

In many ways, the Belums don't know how to move on. But they did know one way of honoring their beloved husband and father. The Belums took a trip to New York City to see Rockefeller Plaza, something they had planned to do with Jerry just a week prior to his death. And while they were away, neighbors got to work planning something special.

Neighbor Tracy Clancy said, “I think I labeled it 'Project Illumination' in the group chat.” The Belum's exterior Christmas decorations had already been unpacked. Jerry was planning to decorate the day he died. Then the neighbors huddled up to make sure his intentions came to light.

One neighbor said, “We wanted to do what Jerry had previously done to the house. But a little different because you know it can't be the exact same.” So, using a photograph of Jerry's decorations last year, the neighbors completed the house to near-perfection.

And upon returning home from New York, the Belums were shocked. "Who did it?" "Did Santa's helpers come by?" "They might have!" Those voices echoed from the backseat of the car in a video taken upon arrival. And the Belums now have a little more light to guide their way through life without Jerry.

Lori said, “We'll be together on Christmas and talk about him and get through it. It'll be hard, but we'll do it and we'll laugh and we'll cry and you know, we'll be okay. Right?”

The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a pastor in Birmingham, Ala., in the 1950s, was called by the historian Andrew Manis “one of the least known but most impactful figures in the civil rights movement.” He was, by his own estimate, arrested in peaceful protests some 30 to 40 times. His house was bombed with his whole family inside one Christmas Eve. His church was subjected to three different bombing attempts

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act and lawyers sought injunctive relief to force Arkansas to integrate Central High in Little Rock. On that very day, Shuttlesworth organized the integration of Phillips High School in Birmingham, driving his own two children to the school to enroll them.

He was met by a white mob that beat him with baseball bats, chains, and brass knuckles. As he was beginning to lose consciousness, Shuttlesworth recounts that “something” said to him: “You can’t die here. Get up. I have a job for you to do.” In the hospital later that day, a reporter asked Shuttlesworth what he was working for in Birmingham. He responded: “For the day when the man who beat me and my family with chains at Phillips High School can sit down with us as a friend.”

What if we could study people from the time that they were teenagers all the way into old age to see what really matters to a person’s health and happiness? For 85 years (and counting), the Harvard Study of Adult Development has tracked about 2,000 men and women for three generations, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy.

Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health, and longevity. It isn’t career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. These things matter, but one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: good relationships

In fact, close personal connections are significant enough that if we had to take all 85 years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period. If you want to make one decision to ensure your own health and happiness, it should be to cultivate warm relationships of all kinds.

A recent news article featured the story of three restaurant-owning brothers in India who constantly compete and bicker for business.

B. Vivekanandhan, the 51-year-old owner of a popular restaurant called Moonrakers, competes fiercely for customers in this southern Indian holiday town. So fiercely, in fact, that fists have flown. His chief foes are his own flesh-and-blood. His older brother operates a seafood joint called Moonwalkers right across the street. Just down the same lane, his younger brother runs Moonrocks. The menus are nearly identical.

At one time, all three brothers and their families would sit down for dinner. The three brothers behind Moonrakers agree it began as a true family endeavor. No more. One of the brothers said, “When money comes, comes, comes, love goes away.”

A couple of times in 2020, two of the brothers brawled with each other in the street in front of befuddled customers. “Sometimes it’s like a street fight,” one brother said. “People say, ‘This is a complicated family. We just came down to eat.’”

It’s all proving baffling to tourists, who frequently are stopped on the street by two of the brothers who were giving pitches for their rival restaurants. One resident said she wanted to eat at the original Moonrakers, but was bewildered by the competing eateries. Her husband, who swore he had dined at Moonrakers years ago, was even more confused.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The church looks just as petty and ridiculous when we don’t walk in unity in Christ.

Men have fewer friends than women and are at a greater risk of isolation. The gap has widened in recent years. A 2021 report identified a male “friendship recession,” with 15% of men saying they have no close friends, up from 3% in 1990.

The researcher of this study concluded that in 1990, nearly half of young men reported that when facing a personal problem, they would reach out first to their friends. Today, only 22% of young men lean on their friends in tough times.

In his novel Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck’s character Crooks pinpoints why this matters so much to men. At one point in the novel Crooks tells another man, “A guy needs somebody … To be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody … I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”

In William Shatner’s new book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, the Star Trek actor reflects on his voyage into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021. Then 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but as the actor and author details below, he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience. He wrote:

My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn't out there, it's down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

Like many who have felt the mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, 22-year-old university student Brooke Lacey had her own share of issues. After Lacey won her battle against depression, in the hope of helping others, the New Zealand native was inspired to create a batch of 600 signs that read: “Please don’t take your life today. The world is so much better with you in it. More than you realize, stay.”

Lacey hung laminated versions of the message on bridges and overpasses, and next to railroads and waterways around the capital city of Wellington. She even had the saying inscribed on a bumper sticker.

But the sentiment was the furthest thing from her mind when she found a piece of very unusual correspondence on the windshield of the car she’d parked in the university lot. Figuring she was in for a scold over poor parking technique, Lacey was instead stunned to find a handwritten note under the wiper blade that thanked her for saving the writer’s life.

The note read. “I left my house with a plan and asked for a sign, any sign, I was doing the right thing when I saw your car in the parking lot. Thank you.”

It took a moment for Lacey’s mind to circle back around to the bumper sticker. She tweeted, “I had these made so long ago, put one on my car and forgot about them, until now. I am so glad whoever you are chose to stay today. You never know who needs this reminder.”

It’s something we should all bear in mind. While the universe may be a random place, for someone in trouble, even the smallest mindful act of kindness can turn out to be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Across the world, men are learning that the easiest way to cure a bout of social isolation is not by talking face-to-face, but shoulder-to-shoulder.

When Phillip Jackson moved back to England from Australia, he was 67, and immediately felt like a stray dog in his native town of Barnsley. He realized that many of those in town at his age had their own problems with social isolation. So, he launched a Barnsley UK chapter of an Australian community movement called “Men’s Shed,” which has expanded across the world, and includes more than 50,000 men.

Capitalizing on most men’s appreciation of woodworking, a Men’s Shed is essentially a support group for men with not enough friends or too much time on their hands. The original concept was to get together and make things out of wood. But in reality, it’s about plugging into the social fabric of a community, whether that’s building a park bench, or listening to the problems someone is going through in their marriage.

Jackson said, “It’s like the shed at the bottom of your garden. But all your friends are there. It’s a break from people’s weekly routines. It gets them out and talking to similar people.” 70-year-old Mike Jenn is a member of a United States Men’s Shed. He said, “We have this kind of male pride thing. I can look after myself. I don’t need to talk to anyone, and it’s a complete fallacy. Not communicating helps to kill us.”

The age range of “Shedders” as Jackson calls them, tends to vary from 22 to 87, which makes sense because anyone can feel lonely at times. He adds that the members come from all walks of life—ex-coalminers to shopkeepers.

Not only can Men’s Sheds be a great place for learning and laughing, they can literally save lives, as loneliness has been shown to shave years off of one’s life, elderly or young.

In 1977 the heart icon became a verb. The “I❤️NY” Logo was created to boost morale for a city that was in severe crisis. Trash piled up on the streets, the crime rate spiked, and New York City was near bankruptcy. Hired by the city to design an image that would increase tourism, Milton Glaser created the famous logo that has since become both a cliché and a meme. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, New Yorkers had tragic reasons for loving their city all the more. Glaser even designed a modified version of his logo: "I❤️NY More than Ever.”

A few years earlier, a new graphic form appeared that also played on the heart image. In 1999 the Japanese provider NTT DoCoMo released the first emoji made specifically for mobile communication. The original 176 emoji’s were rendered in black and white, before they were painted one of six colors. Among the original 176 emojis there were five of the heart. Today our online messages are regularly punctuated by heart emojis in multiple colors and combinations.

Possible Preaching Angle:

According to Scripture, believers are specifically commanded to “heart” the Lord our God (Matt 22:36-37), our neighbor (Matt. 22:36-39), other believers (John 13:34-35), and our spouses (Eph. 5:25, Tit. 2:4). We are not to “heart” the world (1 Jn. 2:15-16) or money (Heb. 13:5).

In 2018, when Dale and Julie Marks bought their home in the Beaverdale community of Des Moines, they were excited because the community is known for its elaborate holiday lights on all its homes. Julie said, “It was like a dream come true to buy a house here. I’ve wanted to live here since I first came through with friends to look at the lights 10 years ago.”

The Markses not only enjoyed participating in the holiday light show, but they leveraged their position in the festivities to help the less fortunate, collecting donations for a local food drive. Last year, visiting neighbors donated more then $7,500 and 1,500 pounds of food.

But when the couple both contracted COVID-19, Dale faced a long recovery and was too weak to unload the numerous boxes from his garage and stand on a ladder to string the yards and yards of lights. Julie was fully recovered, but her time was devoted to Dale’s care.

That’s when a local contractor, Bob Coffey, reached out. He heard about the Markses from a mutual friend. Coffey said, “When I learned they could use some help, I knew I wouldn’t have a problem getting a volunteer crew together. I called Julie and told her I’d love to put up their lights.”

Soon after, Coffey brought four of his employees to the Marks household. With all their tools and expertise, they were able to decorate the whole house in about three hours while Dale watched in dazed appreciation.

Julie said, “It was incredible that they’d do this for us — I wanted to cry.”

Coffey replied, “It’s important in life to pay it forward. If everyone did something, think how that would add up.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we help others in their need, we are modeling the way of Jesus.