Emphasis Preaching Journal

A nurse arrived home at midnight after working a busy double shift in an inner-city emergency room. It felt so good to crawl under the covers and scrunch into the king-sized pillow. But just as he drifted off, he heard his six-year-old daughter crying, "Daddy." She had awakened with a high fever, and as much as she loved her mother, she always wanted Daddy when she was sick. So her exhausted father spent several hours sitting with her until she felt better and drifted off to sleep. Did it frustrate him to lose sleep when he was bone-weary already? "No," he responded, "when your child's sick, a little love is more important than a little sleep." A pastor was wrapping up her day, the last day before a well-deserved two-week vacation. At 4:30 p.m. a bruised woman came into the office. Her husband had beaten her the night before in a drunken rage. It was not the first time. It had taken her all day to make up her mind, but when the children had gotten home from school, she packed them all up and left. Could the pastor help her get into a women's shelter? The pastor wanted to go home and pack for her trip, but instead she spent the evening getting the woman and her children dinner and into an area shelter.
-- Olson