Helping others cross goal lines of life
In the longtime popular comic strip “Peanuts,” Lucy asks Charlie Brown, “Why are we here on earth?”He replies, “To make others happy.”
She ponders this for a moment and asks, “Then why are others here?”
Obviously, that’s not the best, most caring response one could make, but regular followers of the comic strip understand, “That’s just Lucy.”
It was many years ago. In my teens, I stood waiting to enter a motion picture theater in Macon.
The sign read Admission: Adults, 25 cents; children under 12, 10 cents; and children in arms, free.
A small girl – under 12 – led her smaller sister to the ticket-taker line, where she reached down with the greatest effort, picked up her sister and, with the slightly smaller girl’s feet almost dragging on the floor, carried her past the young man who took her 10-cent ticket and admitted one child in arms free.
This week I heard a more moving story of a young man, born with cerebral palsy, whose life’s ambition was to make a touchdown for his high school football team.
He dressed out and was on the field with the coaches, teams and many spectators alerted to the plan.
A hush fell over the tremendous crowd in the stadium as his teammates lined up to make the way clear for him to crawl across the goal line.
As he finished the slow, laborious journey, all the spectators, tears in their eyes, stood to cheer.
Is there anything more caring than helping others cross their goal lines of life?
