When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."-John 8:7-11
By the mid-1940's, Southern Baptist missionary-surgeon Dr. Bill Wallace was everybody's hero. After all, it was Wallace who stayed behind with his Chinese colleagues at the Stout Memorial Hospital in Wuchow, China, when the Japanese attacked their city; all the other missionaries had been evacuated. It was Dr. Wallace who packed the entire hospital staff of 55 workers-plus the hospital's equipment(!)-on three barges and floated up and down the West and Fu Rivers dodging the Japanese Army while still treating patients; including, eventually, the American soldiers who broke through the Japanese cordon. (Sadly, Dr. Wallace would die for his faith in 1951.)
Over in the Christian & Missionary Alliance compound across the Fu River from Stout Memorial Hospital, Wallace was a much-loved regular visitor who broke down the barriers of competition most mission agencies felt in those days. Even more remarkable was the bond between the Baptist doctor and the Catholic missionaries in an era when those two groups usually eyed each other with suspicion. Wallace spent hours and hours treating priests and nuns and other residents of the Catholic compound, always refusing payment even as he modeled Christ-like acceptance of fellow Christians with different doctrines.
Still, even saints have limits, right?
Apparently not.
One afternoon, while making patient rounds, Dr. Wallace happened upon an argument taking place between his Chinese floor nurse and two Chinese orderlies. A patient had recently passed away in the adjacent hospital room, and the nurse insisted the orderlies transport the body to the morgue. The orderlies' superstitions made them reluctant to touch the dead, and their pride of place made them argue such work was beneath them: When Wallace arrived they were insisting such tasks were "coolie labor."
Stopping only long enough to be certain he understood the nature of the argument, the surgeon/hospital administrator Wallace bent down, gently picked up the deceased patient and carried him to the morgue himself.
As one Wallace biographer points out, "no orderly ever refused to carry a body again."
Why?
Certainly, it wasn't because he carried that body "to teach someone a lesson" and they got the message. That wasn't how he lived his life. No, the reason no orderly ever objected again is because they'd seen firsthand what humility in Christ really looks like, played out again and again in acts of uncommon grace.
What a treasure we leave behind when others witness us in moments of unguarded humility committing these acts of uncommon grace. We won't find opportunities to have these moments when we're raging at someone else's politics or ranting that somebody's getting something we didn't get. We won't find those moments, either, when we're winding up to throw a blow at someone's sin, or when we're cheering someone's downfall.
Again and again and again, Jesus demonstrates the powerful effect of uncommon acts of grace: Protecting the woman caught in adultery; inviting tax-cheat Zaccheus to have lunch with Him; talking to the woman at the well in Samaria; healing the unclean and forgiving the unforgiveable; even asking God to forgive those who were about to murder Him. And, of course, his greatest act, which makes our salvation possible.
So, the next time some issue makes you rage, or some injustice causes you to rant, or some headline makes you spitefully sneer your desire to see "that person get what they deserve"; remember-before you accepted Jesus-that's what was sometimes said about you, too.
Then turn your rage on its' ear, quiet your rant, take back your sneer and instead, stun someone with your own uncommon acts of grace. For it's in those moments that we most resemble the Savior.
--Randy Kilgore
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