Unconditional Love

After celebrating his national championship as the head football coach for the Michigan Wolverines, Jim Harbaugh made a surprise appearance at the March for Life in Washington D.C. Harbaugh truly lives out his pro-life convictions. In 2022, he told ESPN about encouraging his players to come to him if they ever dealt with an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy with a partner. He said he wanted them to know that he’d be happy to raise the baby with his wife.

I’ve told (them) the same thing I tell my kids, boys, the girls, same thing I tell our players, our staff members. I encourage them — if they have a pregnancy that wasn’t planned, to go through with it, go through with it. Let that unborn child be born, and if at that time, you don’t feel like you can care for it, you don’t have the means or the wherewithal, then Sarah and I will take that baby. … We got a big house. We’ll raise that baby.

When asked by the media if it was appropriate for him to share his views on the issue, Harbaugh replied:

We need to talk about it. It’s too big an issue to not give real serious consideration to. What kind of person would you be if you didn’t stand up for what you believe in and didn’t fight tooth and nail for it? I believe in letting the unborn be born.

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)

Tim Keller, told the following story about a man named Hasheem Garrett, who learned the art of forgiveness. Hashim was a 15-year-old, living with his mother and hanging out on the streets of Brooklyn with a gang, when he was shot six times and was left paralyzed from the waist down.

For most of the next year he lay in a New York City hospital, fantasizing about revenge. He later wrote: “Revenge consumes me. All I could think about was, just wait, till I get better; just wait till I see this kid.”

But when he was lying on the sidewalk immediately after his shooting, he had instinctively called out to God for help, and, to his surprise, he had felt this strange tranquility. Now during his rehabilitation, a new thought, struck him, namely, that if he took revenge on this kid, why should God not pay him back for all his sins? He concluded, “I shot a kid for no reason, except that a friend told me to do it, and I wanted to prove how tough I was. Six months later, I am shot by somebody because his friend told him to do it.”

That thought was electrifying … He could not feel superior to the perpetrator. They were both fellow sinners who deserved a punishment—and needed forgiveness.

Hasheem said, “In the end I decided to forgive. I felt God had saved my life for a reason, and then I had better fulfill that purpose … And I knew I could never go back out there and harm someone. I was done with that mindset and the life that goes with it … I came to see that I had to let go and stop hating.”

In his book Hinge Moments, college president D. Michael Lindsay shares about the birth of his oldest daughter, Elizabeth. They quickly knew something wasn’t quite right with her developmentally. When she was four months old, their pediatrician said, “Well, I don’t know what to say, but something is definitely wrong with your little girl.” Lindsay says, “I found it difficult to breathe. Grief overtook us and made it hard to get out even basic words. We prayed hard that our worst fears wouldn’t live themselves out, but we dreaded they would.”

After three years of tests and specialists, Elizabeth was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disorder. She is only one of 500 people or so known cases in the world. There is no cure. It involves profound cognitive disability, legal blindness, and many challenges with internal organs.

Lindsay says that parenting Elisabeth has been what he calls a “heavy joy”—filled with profound challenges but also lots of happy moments. It has also taught him and his wife key lessons about being transformed by Christ. Lindsay writes:

Elizabeth is not drawn to fame or self-advancement. She reflects a more authentic way of Christian living, one that is less interested in appearances or achievement. She takes pleasure in simple things—the taste of vanilla ice cream, the thrill of reaching heights in the backyard swing, the delight of listening to songs with a good beat and familiar melody. And Elizabeth is genuinely happy when she pleases her father, clapping for herself when she hears my affirmations.

Having Elizabeth in our family has helped us see the importance of vulnerability and simple obedience to Christ. More importantly, she has demonstrated that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord” (Col. 1:10) doesn’t rely on superior [knowledge or performance]. Instead, it is a way of being that opens us up to fully pleasing the Lord in our respective callings.

In the opening scene of the 2016 film Collateral Beauty, advertising CEO Howard Inlet explains that his strategy is driven by three things. At the end of the day, (1) we long for love. (2) We wish we had more time. And (3) we fear death. These three things, Howard claims, drive every human act.

But then we see him three years later. His six-year-old daughter has died of cancer. It has destroyed him. In his lament at life, he writes letters to love and time and death. To death he writes: “You’re just pathetic and powerless middle management. You don’t even have the authority to make a simple trade.”

Later, he explains what he meant: “When we realized our daughter was dying, I prayed. Not to God or the universe. But to death. Take me. Leave my daughter.”

Like Howard, Jesus volunteered to make the trade for us. But unlike death in Howard’s mind, Jesus wasn’t middle-management. He was completely in control. He is the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Jesus really did die for us.

When Friedrich Stapel went to move the herd of cows under his care, he had no idea they would attract a following. But that’s exactly what happened after he spotted a wild boar piglet, roaming with his cows in his town of Brevoerde, Germany. He theorized that it must have gotten separated from his own kind while crossing a river, but he couldn’t leave the piglet to fend for himself. He said, “To leave it alone now would be unfair.” He nicknamed the piglet “Frieda,” and told the local hunter not to shoot it.

Whether because of the unusual sight of a piglet roaming with cows, or because of Stapel’s act of compassion, word has gathered in the town. You could say Stapel and his herd of cows have attracted a following.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The heart of Jesus is for all people to be brought into God’s family, especially those isolated or traumatized.

Adoption attorney David Anderson wrote in Christianity Today about how it is a privilege for him to help the rare parents who adopt special-needs children. He was particularly moved by the story of Sally and her parents. Anderson writes:

Sally had gone through two heart surgeries in her short life. I talked with her parents, one of whom was almost always at Sally’s crib side. I learned that they had adopted Sally as a newborn even though they knew that there were significant medical risks ahead. When the surgeries came, they did not change their minds about the adoption. Sally’s adoptive parents demonstrated their love to her by being almost constantly present in the hospital room, by talking to her, by bathing her, and by holding her. In years to come, Sally may experience various disabilities, but her parents give every indication that they will continue to love her in a way consistent with their initial choice to adopt her.

I know another couple who adopted three special-needs children from India: one girl had polio in one leg and never walked until she was fitted with leg braces in the States. Another girl had surgery for a cleft palate, and the younger brother needs blood transfusions every three weeks. All these moms and dads did not have to love and adopt the child they chose; they were not compelled to shoulder the extra burden of disabilities. I would have understood if they had said no. But they did not.

We may not want to admit it, but each of us is a special-needs child in our relationship to God. We may not have any significant disabilities in the eyes of this world, but we are often spiritually blind and sick, disobedient, and willful. How can it be that God is there, always waiting, always loving, even when we are unlovable?

During World War II, a US Army Transport Ship carrying 902 servicemen was struck by a German submarine. Panic and chaos quickly set in as men raced for lifeboats in the frigid waters off the coast of Greenland.

In the midst of pandemonium, four Army chaplains worked to calm the frightened men. One was a Jewish Rabbi, one was a Methodist, one was a Roman Catholic priest, and one was a Dutch Reformed minister.

On the deck of the ship, they worked to distribute life vests to soldiers escaping into the frigid waters. When they ran out, each minister simultaneously removed their jacket and gave them to the soldiers. They didn't call out for soldiers who were in their particular tradition. They simply gave their jackets to the next men in line. One survivor would later say, "It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven."

As the ship went down, survivors in nearby rafts could see the four chaplains--arms linked and braced against the slanting deck. Their voices could also be heard offering prayers and singing hymns. Of the 902 men aboard, only 230 survived. Congress later conferred a posthumous Medal for Heroism, The Four Chaplains' Medal, upon the four chaplains.

Before boarding the Dorchester, the Dutch Reformed minister, Chaplain Poling asked his father to pray for him, "Not for my safe return, that wouldn't be fair. Just pray that I shall do my duty … never be a coward … and have the strength, courage and understanding of men. Just pray that I shall be adequate."

David rejoices in the fact that God's steadfast love toward those who fear him can be illustrated by the height of the heavens above the earth (Ps. 103:11). David was not an astronomer. He had no grasp on the unimaginable magnitude of the height to which he refers. But we do today.

A good way to help us fathom the unfathomable is the light-year. A light-year is how far light travels in one calendar year. Light moves at 186,000 miles in one second. Multiply 186,000 times 60 seconds, and you have a light-minute. Mul­tiply that figure by 60 minutes, and you have a light-hour. Multiply that figure by 24, and you have a light-day, and that by 365, and you have a light-year. So, light can travel almost six trillion miles (the number six followed by 12 zeroes) in a 365-day period. That's the equivalent of about 12,000,000 round trips to the moon.

Let's assume we are speeding in a jet airplane at 500 miles per hour on a trip to the moon. If we traveled non-stop, 24 hours a day, it would take us just about 3 weeks to arrive at our destination. If we wanted to visit our sun, 93 million miles from earth, it would take us a bit more than 21 years to get there. And if we wanted to reach Pluto, the dwarf planet farthest away in our solar system, our non-stop trip would last slightly longer than 900 years.

Now, try to get your mind around this: The Hubble Telescope has given us breathtaking pictures of a galaxy some 13 billion light-years from earth. That would put this galaxy 78 sextillion miles from earth (the number 78 followed by 21 zeroes).

If we are traveling at 500 miles per hour nonstop, literally 52 weeks in every year, with not a moment's pause, we would reach this galaxy in 20 quadrillion years (The number 20 followed by 15 zeroes)! And that would get us just to the farthest point that our best telescopes have yet been able to detect. This would be the mere fringe of what lies beyond. It is currently estimated that there are around two trillion galaxies in the observable Universe.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Pause for a moment and let this sink in. Are you beginning to get a feel for what it means to know that God's love for you, is greater than the distance between the heavens and the earth?

In China, the extremely wealthy can avoid prison terms by hiring body doubles. Incredibly, this is true! Slate.com originally broke the story of how the super-rich in China get away with pretty much everything, including murder.

According to Slate, a wealthy 20-year-old named Hu was drag racing his friends, when he struck and killed a pedestrian. Although Hu received a three-year prison sentence, allegations arose that the man appearing in court and serving the three-year sentence wasn’t Hu at all, but a hired body double!

In another case, the owner of a demolition company that illegally demolished a home hired a destitute man and promised him $31 for each day the “body double” spent in jail. In China, the practice is so common that there is even a term for it: “substitute criminal.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This may seem scandalous, but 2000 years ago Someone became our substitute and took the punishment we deserve. He took the penalty of all our sins in his own body on the Cross. Justice is not met by the wealthy getting off scot-free. However, the death of Christ was “The just for the unjust – so that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18).

The old adage tells us to “forgive and forget,” but does that line up with the church’s understanding of forgiveness? Does showing mercy really require that we no longer remember the wrongdoing?

Pastors are half as likely as their congregations to say that real forgiveness requires forgetting. Pastors are also more likely than those in the pews to say it’s about “restoring a relationship but not forgetting.” Either way, forgiveness can be di­fficult for us to extend—around a quarter of practicing Christians know someone they can’t or don’t want to forgive.

Percent of practicing Christians who identify with each experience:

Received unconditional forgiveness from someone – 55%

Have not received unconditional forgiveness – 38%

Know someone they don’t want to forgive – 27%

Know someone they can’t forgive – 23%

Have not offered unconditional forgiveness – 15%

Stephen Olford tells the story of Peter Miller, a Baptist pastor during the American Revolution. Miller, lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, and one of his dearest friends was General George Washington. In the town of Ephrata there also lived a spiteful troublemaker named Michael Wittman who did all he could to oppose and humiliate Miller.

One day, Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to death. When he heard the news, Miller set out to Philadelphia to plead for the life of his enemy. After walking seventy miles—on foot—Miller petitioned his friend, General Washington, to spare Wittman’s life.

“No, Peter,” General Washington said. “I cannot grant you the life of your friend.”

“My friend?” exclaimed the old preacher. “He’s not my friend. In fact, he is the bitterest enemy I have.”

“What?” cried Washington. “You’ve walked seventy miles to save the life of an enemy? That puts the matter in different light. I’ll grant your pardon.” And he did.

That day, Miller and Wittman walked back home to Ephrata together. When they arrived home, they were no longer enemies. They were friends.

In a sermon on the Atonement, Will Anderson used the following illustration:

Food demonstrates how everyone benefits from a form of atonement, whether they acknowledge it or not. Everything we eat—whether plant or animal—was once alive. It had to be plucked from the tree, pulled from the earth, or slaughtered in order to sustain you. Every meal is a testament to the fact that other things must die, if you are to live.

Most people who regularly enjoy a juicy burger or steak have never looked into the eyes of the animal that gave its life for their sustenance. The realities of the slaughterhouse are unseen and unthought of by most consumers—we reap the benefits without considering the cost. It’s hypocritical to caricature the Cross as needlessly cruel while benefiting from atonement at the dinner table every day.

Some may object: It’s one thing to kill an animal, but another entirely for God to (sacrifice) his Son. Yes, it’s true that the Cross is horrific. And yet Christ willingly embraced it, which should fill us with trembling and humility, not disgust.

Something stirs our souls when we watch someone willingly die for another—it moves and breaks us simultaneously. Why? It’s because our souls were formed by a Creator who sacrificed himself for us. We may deny atonement with our heads, but our hearts can’t be fooled.

Ryan and Morgan, adopted a child from an orphanage in another country. They'd passed through all the legal processes in that country. Charlie was their son. But right before the day when they were supposed to pick Charlie up from the orphanage, things changed. There were some political upheavals, and the country froze the process. No more children were going to be able to leave the country.

Charlie could not come to Ryan and Morgan. So, they decided to go to him. They flew over from the US and basically camped outside of the orphanage. They spent half their time with their son and the other half lobbying the courts and meeting with government officials, pleading with them to release their son.

After a few weeks Morgan came home, but Ryan stayed. It was at Christmas time. This was not where he wanted to be at Christmas—away from home, far from family. But here was a father who loved his son. Since his son could not come to him, he was going to go to that son, and he was going to fight for that son. There would be more days and weeks of struggle, but, wonderfully, Ryan was eventually able to bring Charlie home.

That Christmas, as Ryan battled corrupt court systems on the other side of the world … he was a picture of the kind of "Eternal Father" that Jesus is for anyone who asks him to be. Jesus went far further for us than Ryan went for his son. He didn't leave a country of privilege to move to a country of poverty. No, he left the riches of heaven to come to a world of pain. He did all that because he loves us. He did all that because he wants to be with us. He came to us to ensure that we could go to be with him, and it cost him far more than a plane ticket.

There is the kind of dad who is stable and consistent, who provides for his family, who wouldn't dream of abandoning or abusing his family—but who never says "I love you."

Bo Jackson is still the only man to be an All-Star player in both baseball and football. Some argue that he is the greatest athlete in history. Maybe so. But that didn't make up for his relationship with his father—or lack of it:

My father has never seen me play a football or baseball game. Not a single one. Can you imagine? Here I am, Bo Jackson, one of the so-called premier athletes in the country, and after the game I'm sitting in the locker room and envying every one of my teammates whose dad would come in and talk, have a drink with them after the game. I never experienced that.

In the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin, an old man is talking to his daughter about the secret of marital love between he and his late wife. He tells her:

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other, underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree and not two.

Auburn Sandstrom, professor of writing from the University of Akron, tells her story:

I was curled up in a fetal position on a filthy carpet in a cluttered apartment. I’m in horrible withdrawal from a drug addiction. I have a little piece of paper. It’s dilapidated because I’ve been folding it and unfolding it. But I could still make out the phone number on it.

I am in a state of bald terror. My husband is out, and trying to get ahold of some of the drugs that we needed. But right behind me, sleeping in the bedroom, is my baby boy. I wasn’t going to get a Mother of the Year award. In fact, at the age of 29, I was failing at a lot of things. So, I decided to get clean. I was soon going to lose the most precious thing I’d ever had in my life - that baby boy.

I was so desperate at that moment that I wanted to make use of that phone number – it was something my mother had sent me. She said, “This is a Christian counselor, maybe sometime you could call this person.”

It was 2 in the morning, but I punched in the numbers. I heard a man say, “Hello.” And I said, “Hi, I got this number from my mother. Uh, do you think you could maybe talk to me?” He said, “Yes, yes, of course. What’s going on?”

I told him I was scared, and that my marriage had gotten pretty bad. Before long, I started telling him other truths, like I might have a drug problem. And this man just sat with me and listened and had such a kindness and a gentleness. “Tell me more … Oh, that must hurt very much.” And he stayed up with me the whole night, just being there until the sun rose. By then I was feeling calm. The raw panic had passed. I was feeling OK.

I was very grateful to him, and so I said, “I really appreciate you and what you’ve done for me tonight. How long have you been a Christian counselor?” There’s a long pause. He said, “Auburn, please don’t hang up. I’m so afraid to tell you this … He pauses again. “You got the wrong number. I’m not a therapist, but I’ve really enjoyed talking with you.”

I didn’t hang up on him. I never got his name. I never spoke to him again. But the next day I felt like I was shining. I discovered that there was this completely random love in the universe. That it could be unconditional. And that some of it was for me. And it also became possible as a teetotaling, single parent to raise up that precious baby boy into a magnificent young scholar and athlete, who graduated from Princeton in 2013 with honors.

In the deepest, blackest night of despair, if you can get just one pinhole of light … all of grace rushes in.

It was late at night and a group of Jewish teenagers were on a walk around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir in Massachusetts. Boston College Police Officer Carl Mascioli was on patrol on May 17, that night. "As I approached them, two of them ran up to my car," said the patrolman. They said, "There was a body in the water."

Mascioli ran down the embankment and found a man partially submerged and not moving. He said, “While I was pulling him out of the water, I observed that he had a swastika on his hand ... It turned out the man the Jewish boys helped save had a tattoo of the Nazi symbol. I … let the gentlemen know sometimes some deeds have a funny way of turning around. Their good deed had a little bit of a twist to it.”

The students, who study at a nearby Yeshiva high school in Brighton, were not permitted to speak with reporters about the incident. But they had a message for the officer to share with the man they helped rescue. Mascioli recalled, “They wanted just to let him know that it was four young Jewish boys that helped save his life.” He said the students had no regrets about helping a man with an anti-Semitic tattoo. “A good deed is a good deed and that's part of life. We should be helping everybody out.”

It's unknown how the man ended up in the water. But police say he didn't have much time left, and if it hadn't been for the teenagers, the patrolman likely wouldn't have seen him. The man is expected to recover.

A New York Times obituary for a woman named Victoria Ruvolo provided a moving story about the power of forgiveness.

Ms. Ruvolo’s widely publicized kindness toward her attacker provided emotional counterpoint to a senseless act that began in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2004. She was returning home from watching a niece sing at a recital in Amityville, also on Long Island. The turkey crashed through Ms. Ruvolo’s windshield, crushing the bones in her cheeks and jaw, fracturing the socket of her left eye, causing her esophagus to cave in and leaving her with brain trauma. Suffolk County prosecutors had wanted Mr. Cushing to serve the maximum of 25 years in prison for first-degree assault and other offenses. But Ms. Ruvolo persuasively argued that a long sentence would only turn him into a hardened criminal.

After his guilty plea in August 2005, Mr. Cushing—aware that Ms. Ruvolo had pressed for a short sentence—stopped to speak to her in the courtroom and wept profusely. She embraced him, stroked his face and patted his back. “I’m so sorry,” he said to her as he sobbed. “I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s O.K., it’s O.K.,” she replied. “I just want you to make your life the best it can be.”

Two months later, at his sentencing hearing in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead, he told her: “Your ability to forgive has had a profound effect on me. It has already made a positive change in my life.”

You can read her own account of the incident here.

In an interview on NPR’S Fresh Air, Joshua Mezrich, an associate professor in the division of multiorgan transplantation at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, reflected on saying a few words about the donor before the operation begins:

I want to reiterate as many times as possible how important the donors are. How much they are heroes to us and we always want to remember their stories and this gift that they're giving. It's very emotional when … we're in the operating room, we always take a pause. Our people from our organ procurement team, after a moment of silence, will read something. Often it's a poem or something that one of the loved ones asked us to say about the person. Maybe a little bit about who they were and what was important to them. Sometimes it has a religious base, sometimes it doesn't.

And we all think about it, and it is very special. It's emotional. And then the second that's over, we move on and really go after the task at hand. So it's interesting. You have this emotional experience. Then you have to very quickly kind of push it out of the way and move on to the operation. But it's always very special.

How much more should we as Christians seek to remember the gospel story and what we have been given?