I did a Google search on the one and didn’t find what I needed, I did a Bible search for the other and found it reported 14 times in 6 books of the New Testament.
For what was I searching?
I was a young teen sitting on the floor of the family room watching the evening news with my family, it was the nightly count of the young men killed in the Vietnam… a conflict, not a war mind you…still there were people killed every day.
On this particular night I was stunned by what I heard…
The national news reporter had a big old smile on his face as he reported that only one soldier had been killed, since he last reported…
Did that hit you in the gut as hard as it hit me as I sat listening to that? The thought struck me,
ONLY ONE!
It may be only one in the statistic book but for one family it was their whole world, the son, boyfriend, brother, friend who was killed on foreign soil for something he probably didn’t even believe in or know for sure why he was there…and yet the newsman was happy because there was only one.
Maybe it didn’t matter to the whole world… it didn’t change the course of history, but it did change the world for one family.
Then I thought of another solitary death. The reporter might have said something like, “There are many different opinions about this man, some call him a heretic, others call him the Son of God. There was a sign above his head that said, “this is the King of the Jews” which seemed to be said with an undertone of sarcasm. Among the people gathered at the foot of the cross was his mother, a very close friend of this man, so close that with the last few breaths of his life he asked this man, someone named John, to look at this man’s mother as his very own mother and asked her to look at John as her son. There were a few other women who seemed very upset, and I did notice a soldier standing at a distance who seemed a little stunned at something this man had done, I don’t know but it all did seem very strange!”
This man who died actually did affect the whole world because with His own shed blood He cleansed us from all of our unrighteousness and as a bonus gave us eternal life, and I know for sure there is an eternal, everlasting life beyond what we now know.
I haven’t forgotten that alongside of this man Jesus were two others, they weren’t reported on because they were thieves and deemed unworthy of a notice in the local obituary however, what the newsman did not know is that one of them asked Jesus to forgive him of his sins, he believed that he was not a thief nor a heretic but the very Son of God. Because of that, Jesus promised that he would be with him in Paradise!
I felt sorrow for the family that lost the young soldier on the battlefield of Vietnam, I feel grateful for the man who lost His life on the cross of redemption all for me.
Harolene.com 