Not all the news is bad.
It’s not all anger and riots, destruction and denunciation. Last week was Valentine’s Day. I read a brief story about John Mackay who was spending his 71st Valentine’s Day with his wife, Edith Steiner Mackay. But the good news gets better.
They married in 1946 in Scotland.
After they met at a dance.
After John and a number of other Scottish commandos liberated Auschwitz.
Where Edith was a prisoner.
Today they live in a care facility. One of the staff members said, “Their devotion to one another is clear to anyone who spends even a short time in their company.”
The story makes us smile, and not just because it’s sweet, or because it’s a welcome respite from the other headlines. The commitment and love and heroism comforts and reassures us. But it goes even deeper. Yes, the good news gets better.
John and Edith’s story pictures the gospel.
We were prisoners with no hope. Death loomed before us with the only uncertainty in its timing. Jesus liberated us from prison and from that death sentence, but it gets better. He loved us and entered an intimate relationship with us. And it gets better. That relationship will last far beyond 71 years.
Stories like John’s and Edith’s are like little love notes God has tucked away in culture, and in society. They whisper, “I love you like that.”
That’s good news. Good news that gets better.
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Galatians 2:20
