By James Dillet Freeman
Th ere was One who showed us what we all might be. He did not so much tell us what our lives should be like, he lived the life that we might live.
The One we all might be had faith in other people. He saw in them potentialities that others overlooked. He knew them to be capable of more than they themselves thought. He inspired sinners to become saints, social outcasts to become public benefactors, weaklings to become towers of strength. He changed common fi shermen into “fi shers of men.”
Th e One we all might be saw through life’s imperfections—through sickness and doubt, through poverty and fear, through hatred and pride, even through death—and he called forth wholeness, faith, joy, love, and life. He showed us what life might be—lived to the utmost of its possibilities. He showed us what a person might be who held to the highest and best in himself.
How hard we fi nd it to love one or two persons! Yet he showed us that it is possible to learn to love all. How many hours we have wasted in resentment! Yet this One showed us that it is possible to live free from hate.
He knew how much a loving heart is worth, he had a sense of right values. He was able to judge not by appearances; able to put first things first; able to see how much more important than material treasures are the treasures of heart and mind.
He saw people as they are, fl esh-and-blood creatures with physical needs and desires. Not once did he suggest, “It will be better for your soul if your body suffers, so I will not help you.” Th ose who were sick, he healed; those who were hungry, he fed. He knew that love does not exact pain-payments as the price of spiritual growth.
Th is is no man of sorrows, though he wept. Though he suffered, his was no tragic life. Even his death was not truly tragic, for how quickly the darkness of Calvary was wiped away in the light of Easter morning! Th e energy released by the overcoming that he made at death is still fl ooding, two thousand years later, into millions of lives.
Excerpted from Angels Sing in Me: Th e James Dillet Freeman Memorial Book (Unity Books, 2004)