Honor

When Austin Dunsmuir sat down to write wedding day letters to each of his bride Mikayla’s loved ones, he wasn’t aiming for viral fame—he simply wanted to honor the people who had helped shape the woman he was about to marry. But the powerful gesture, captured in a TikTok that has since touched millions, revealed the depth of his love and emotional intelligence in a way few wedding traditions do.

“I’m going to try not to get emotional,” Mikayla Dunsmuir told PEOPLE, reflecting on the moment she first learned of Austin’s surprise. “He really appreciates these amazing (people) that are in my life now.” The recipients included not just bridesmaids, but also both sets of parents, Mikayla’s grandmother, the couple’s ring bearers, and the maid of honor.

Austin’s idea came after seeing how deeply Mikayla’s inner circle poured into her during her bridal year. “I was like, I really want to do something special for them for the wedding,” Mikayla recalled. “And he was like, ‘What if I wrote them something from my perspective of your friendship and it’s a surprise?’”

Mikayla described the emotional scene as the letters were opened. “Everyone opened the letter from Austin at the same time,” she told them, wanting to witness their collective reaction. “I was just happy seeing them be so emotional toward our relationship and toward him.”

One of the most poignant letters was to Mikayla’s father, read aloud at the wedding. “Austin grew up without a father, so my dad has been like the closest thing to a father for him,” Mikayla explained. “We wanted to make a moment of the day about him and let everyone know how much we love him.”

Reflecting on the experience, Mikayla shared, “He’s honestly just such a kind-hearted, selfless angel... I love that some people are getting to see that now because he’s a very private person.” The letters didn’t just move the recipients—they strengthened lifelong bonds and left an indelible mark on their wedding day.

Potential Preaching Angle:

Love gives honor to the parents and family who laid our foundation.

Pastor Bryan Chapell writes in his recent book Grace at Work:

I have a friend who's a marathon runner. He was in a race a few years ago that he knew would be tough, particularly at the end. And knowing what happens at the ends of races, how people call out encouragement, he didn't put his own name on his racing bib but actually wrote the word “Christian.” He knew that when he got to that final mile, and all the people were cheering, they wouldn't call out his name but would say, "Go get `em, Christian!" "You can do it, Christian!" "Hang in there, Christian!" He ran to represent the name of Christ that he bore.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Colossians 3:17 tells us: "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus." Everything you do should be in the name of Christ. When we are in the workplace, we bear the name of our Savior. Because we represent Christ, we don't cheat the boss on our timecards or on expense reports, even if others do. We don't lie to the IRS. Why? Because our Lord has written his name on us so that others can see him.

As the Russian invasion into Ukraine drags onward, international approval ratings of Russian president Vladimir Putin have been, pardon the term, tanking. But for a certain subset of Canadians, the anti-Putin sentiment adds unacceptable insult to Ukrainian injury. And like other more serious international incidents, people are somehow blaming the French.

That’s because the French spelling of the Russian president’s name is “Poutine,” which is also the name of a French-Canadian diner staple: fried potatoes topped with gravy and cheese curds. This is why French restaurant Maison de la Poutine was subject to rude, harassing, and insulting phone calls throughout February and March. This is because people read the name of its signature dish – often called the national dish of Canada – and misinterpreted it as support for the Russian leader.

On its Twitter account, the restaurant was forced to issue a clarification, which included the following affirmation:

Poutine was created by passionate cooks who wanted to bring joy and comfort to their customers. La Maison de la Poutine has worked since its first day to carry on these values. Today it brings its most sincere support to the Ukrainian people who are courageously fighting for their freedom against the tyrannical Russian regime.

Another popular French-Canadian restaurant Le Roy Jucep, went even further, renaming the popular dish as “la frite fromage” (literally “the cheese potato”), so as to dissuade any presumed affiliation with Putin.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Names are important because they bestow honor. When someone behaves dishonorably, we besmirch the names we are given and others see those names as disgraceful.

Why are so many people reluctant to give unsolicited praise to others? It may simply be that we underestimate how well a compliment will be received and overestimate the cost of giving it.

In a study published in the Psychology Bulletin, researchers asked people to approach a same-gender stranger and offer a sincere compliment. The compliment-givers felt anxious prior to the interaction because they predicted their compliment would be negatively received. But their predictions weren’t accurate. Overall, they significantly underestimated how flattered, happy, and pleased people would feel about being complimented. They also significantly overestimated how awkward or annoyed the recipients would feel.

Psychologist Erica Boothby suggests, “We should think about how we would feel if we received a compliment--and remember that others will feel the same. … A few kind words go a long way.”

During the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson marched more than two thousand Tennessee volunteers from Nashville to New Orleans. With bravado they fought the decisive Battle of New Orleans. The fighting took its toll on Jackson's troops, but sickness proved to be the deadliest and most dangerous enemy. One hundred fifty soldiers became gravely ill, fifty-six of whom could not even stand.

Dr. Samuel Hogg asked the general what he wanted him to do. "To do, sir?" Jackson answered. "You are to leave not a man on the ground." It wasn't official code of conduct yet, but Jackson embodied the military motto "Leave no man behind."

Andrew Jackson ordered his officers to give up their horses to those who were sick, and the general was the first to do so. Jackson marched 531 miles on foot. Somewhere between New Orleans and Nashville, he earned the nickname "Old Hickory," the same name under which he would campaign for president fifteen years later.

Before winning the White House, the seventh president of the United States is alleged to have fought as many as thirteen duels, which explains the thirty-seven pistols in his gun collection. I'm not advocating the reintroduction of dueling, but it does reveal something about Jackson's character-Old Hickory wasn't one to shrink from a fight, especially when honor was at stake!

Jackson said, “I was born for the storm. And the calm does not suit me.” When the sea is calm, anyone can captain the ship in that situation. But when a perfect storm threatens to capsize your marriage or drown your dreams, you must play the man. A true man doesn't sit back. He steps up and steps in. He fights the good fight, even when it seems like all is lost. Why? Because a true man is born for the storm.

Paul Louis Metzger writes:

My greatest living hero is Dr. John M. Perkins, an African American evangelical Christian and civil rights leader nearly beaten to death in Mississippi in 1970 for his work defending the rights of poor blacks. ... One evening in Portland, Oregon, I was driving the now-elderly Dr. Perkins to a benefit dinner. He was to serve as the keynote speaker at the dinner, which was raising money for an inner-city community development ministry that brought jobs and housing to ex-offenders and youth.

As we drove along--fittingly on a street called Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard--I asked Dr. Perkins what it was like for him now in Mississippi. Dr. Perkins replied matter-of-factly, “I'm kind of a hero now in Mississippi. It seems that every time the state newspapers write something about reconciliation, they quote me. It's as if I created the word. But when I think about how many homes my fame has built for the poor in Mississippi, I realize that my fame hasn't built any homes for the poor. So, I don't put no stock in my fame.”

At Princeton University, an artist has taken it upon himself to honor a group of unsung heroes with an honor usually reserved for top-level donors, former presidents, or founding charter holders. Mario Moore painted a series of ten portraits honoring the blue-collar laborers who help keep the campus functioning in the areas of maintenance, facilities, dining, grounds, and security.

In an interview with CNN, Moore said he wanted to depict those folks “in a position of power.” University spokesman Ben Chang said, “Mario's portraits capture beautifully the character and contributions of valued members of our campus community and bolster our broader efforts to ensure Princeton's portraiture … reflects the University's values and diversity.”

According to Tracy K. Smith, the art center chair, “Mario’s work and his presence on campus have served to heal some of the lasting wounds of racial division that have long marred this institution's history.”

Possible Preaching Angle: God is honored when we recognize unsung heroes, people who serve quietly and consistently, for the benefit of the community.

Soul singer Lionel Ritchie was once deeply impacted by a speech in which his father had honored his mother, on their 37th wedding anniversary. In his speech, Ritchie Senior had lovingly honored his wife for sticking by him through the ups and downs of life over many years. Said Lionel, “What a great story because I pass through my house every day and I don’t say thank you. I just take for granted that certain things be done.”

That speech moved him to compose one of his best loved romantic ballads, “Three Times a Lady.”

In the Body of Christ, we too are encouraged to give honor to each other. The Apostle Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:10 says, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” Paul also often thanked those who partnered with him in the ministry as shown in Philippians 1:3 where he says, “I thank my God every time I remember you.”

Let us continue to “honor one another.”

The Comedian Louis CK has a routine in which he jokes about having the impulse to give up his first class airline seat to a soldier. Louis CK says,

[Service men and women] always fly coach. I've never seen a soldier in first class in my life … And every time that I see a soldier on a plane I always think, You know what? I should give him my seat. It would be the right thing to do, it would be easy to do, and it would mean a lot to him … I never have, let me make that clear. I've never done it once … And here's the worst part: I was actually proud of myself for having thought of this. I am such a sweet man. That is so nice of me, to think of doing that and then totally never do it.

In June of 2014 Oscar nominated actress Amy Adams actually acted on that thought. Boarding a flight Friday from Detroit to Los Angeles where she was shooting a new movie, Adams noticed an American soldier being seated in coach. She decided to do something that she's always just thought about doing. Jemele Hill, a reporter for ESPN and a fellow first class passenger, witnessed Adams quietly asking the airline crew permission to switch seats with the soldier, whom she didn't know. Adams moved back to coach, and the surprised soldier, who didn't know who his benefactor was, moved up to first class. Hill immediately got the word out on Twitter, and after their arrival in L.A. Adams told reporters, "I didn't do it for attention for myself. I did it for attention for the troops."

In a TIME magazine editorial, the self-described feminist Camille Paglia called for an end to what she called our culture's habit of "demonizing [men's] faults, failings, and foibles." Ms. Pagila writes that when our civilization fails, as all civilizations do, it will be good, strong men who will keep women and children safe. Then she offered this tribute to the contributions of men to our world:

Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role—but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

In December 1943, German fighter pilot Franz Stigler was in pursuit of American bomber pilot Charlie Brown's plane, looking to shoot it down. If he did, it would earn him the Knight's Cross, the highest honor for a German soldier. But as he approached the plane, Stigler saw that it had no tail guns blinking, no tail-gun compartment remaining, no left stabilizer, and the nose of the aircraft was missing.

Surprisingly, he could also see into the plane, the skin of it having been blown off. Inside, he observed terrified young men tending to their wounded. Stigler could not shoot the plane down. He had been trained that "honor is everything." If he survived the war, his superior officer told him, the only way he would be able to live with himself was if he had fought with as much humanity as possible. Stigler could tell that Brown didn't realize how bad a shape his plane was in. He gestured for Brown to land the plane, intending to escort him. But Brown had no intention of landing in Germany and being taken prisoner along with his men. Stigler then yelled "Sweden," meaning that Brown should land his plane there. But Brown didn't know what Stigler was yelling. Stigler saluted Brown and veered away. His last words to him were, "Good luck, you're in God's hands now."

Brown was able to land the plane in England. He continued his Air Force career for two decades, but remained obsessed with the incident. In 1990, he took out an ad in a newsletter for fighter pilots, looking for the one "who saved my life on Dec. 20, 1943." Stigler, living in Vancouver, saw the ad and yelled to his wife: "This is him! This is the one I didn't shoot down!" He immediately wrote a letter to Brown, and the two then connected in an emotional phone call.

Stigler and Brown both died in 2008, six months apart. The article in the New York Post also noted that both men were Christians and that the obituaries for Stigler and Brown both listed the other friend as "a special brother."

In 2012, a 19-year-old man from Washington state named Dakoda Garren was charged with stealing a rare coin collection worth at least $100,000. After Garren had completed some part-time work for a woman living north of Portland, the woman reported that her family coin collection was missing. Her collection included a variety of rare and valuable coins, including Liberty Head quarters, Morgan dollars, and other coins dating back to the early 1800s.

Initially, Garren denied any involvement, claiming that the police didn't have any evidence against him. But then he started spending the coins at face value, apparently unaware of the coins' worth. He and his girlfriend paid for movie tickets using quarters worth between $5 and $68. Later on the same day, they bought some local pizza with rare coins, including a Liberty quarter that may be worth up to $18,500.

The news article reported, "Garren has been charged with first-degree theft and is being held in jail on $40,000 bond. Which, technically, is an amount he could easily afford if the valuable coin collection were actually his."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Our Relationship with God—We honor God (or the things of God) when we treat him with the value he deserves. We dishonor the Lord—in our attitudes or in our actions, such as worship—when we treat God like an ordinary or even a cheap object. (2) Our Relationships with Others—In the same way, we dishonor other people (such as our spouse, our friends, our children, even our enemies) when we treat them as cheap objects. They should be treated according to the value God has placed on them. (3) The Importance of Rightly Setting Value on Everything in Life—We need to place ultimate value where it belongs, in the things of God that endure forever. The ability to discern true value is crucial, as seen in the story of Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of stew.

Japanese-born big-leaguer Ichiro Suzuki is one of the best hitters in baseball. Prior to 2012, he led the Major Leagues in regular season hits on seven occasions.

To state the obvious, you hit a baseball with a bat. Ichiro Suzuki seems to be more aware of that obvious fact than other baseball players, because he treats his bats as if they were Stradivarius violins.

Suzuki says, "In Japan we take care of our instruments, our bats and our gloves. We take care of them well, because these things are very important."

The Mizuno sports equipment company custom-makes Suzuki's bats for him by hand from Tamo wood grown on the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Suzuki doesn't throw his black bats in a canvas bag. Instead, he keeps eight bats in a custom-made suitcase that is shockproof and moisture-free. Inside the dehumidifying case with the bats are two bags of pellets that absorb moisture.

Suzuki cares for and respects his bats as though his life depended on them, and indeed his livelihood does depend on them.

In a much greater way, God tells us to take care of his Words, to have great respect for them. We are to honor his Words by reading them, meditating on them, memorizing them, discussing them with others, hearing them taught, and most important of all, believing them and obeying them. For God's Words are our life.

Editor’s Note: Since 2020, the year after he retired from MLB, Ichiro has been going from high school to high school in Japan, coaching young ballplayers on hitting and other aspects of the game. He's now an elder statesman, passing on the knowledge he gained during his 19-year MLB career. In 2023 he demonstrated that he still has a powerful bat. While showing players how he hits, Ichiro got a hold of a ball and sent it flying over the fence that separates the field from the school. It ended up breaking a window and flying into an unsuspecting math class.

When evangelist Billy Graham was in the prime of fame and influence, author Gordon MacDonald was an unknown student in seminary. Yet one day MacDonald got the opportunity to meet the famous preacher, and through the experience he learned something about treating others with respect. MacDonald writes:

[When I was] a seminary student, I had my first chance to meet Mr. Graham personally. "Billy, I'd like you to meet Gordon MacDonald," my introducer said.

I was a 24-year-old, scrawny, somewhat unpromising kid, struggling to pass basic seminary courses, and I was one of many being introduced to Billy Graham. What do I remember about that moment? That he fixed his piercing eyes upon me, extended his hand and said, "Mr. MacDonald, it's an honor to meet you." Mr. MacDonald! He addressed me as if I were a peer or someone "superior" to him. Oh, the dignity of the moment for me. For the space of about—I'm guessing—ten seconds, he connected with me and it seemed as if the two of us were the only people in the room. For weeks I bathed in that awesome moment in which this extraordinary man poured value into me. Such a tiny encounter: such an unforgettable moment.

R. C. Sproul shares the story of a college student he once taught who had cerebral palsy. You know what that looks like—spastic movements and garbled speech. But as is often the case, this student was very bright and capable. Sproul writes:

One day he came to me vexed with a problem and asked me to pray for him. In the course of the prayer, I said something routine, with words like, "Oh, God, please help this man as he wrestles with this problem." When I opened my eyes, the student was quietly weeping.

I asked him what was wrong and he stammered his reply, "You called me a man. No one has ever called me a man before."

Andy Crouch writes in an article titled "Teaching People to Flourish”:

I lived in Boston in the 1980s, and I spoke with a pastor of a major church there. We were reflecting on the ways the church doesn't always recognize the culture cultivators and creators in its midst. This pastor said, "There's a woman in our church who was the lead litigator for the Environmental Protection Agency for the clean up of Boston Harbor. It's occurred to me since then that she played this incredibly important role in one of the great environmental success stories of the second half of the Twentieth Century. When I started high school, no one would put a toe in Boston Harbor, it was so polluted. And now there are beaches, and people go to the beach and swim. This Christian woman lawyer succeeded in litigating that case." He said, "The only time we have ever recognized her in church was for her role in teaching second grade Sunday school. And of course we absolutely should celebrate Sunday school teachers, but why did we never celebrate her incredible contribution to our whole city as a Christian, taking care of God's creation?"