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When
One be Offended by Others
Sen. Mark Hatfield
recounts the following history: James Garfield was a lay preacher and principal
of his denominational college. They say he was ambidextrous and could
simultaneously write Greek
with one hand and Latin with the other.
In l880
he was elected
president of the United States
but after only six months in office
he was
shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost consciousness. At the hospital
the doctor probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet. He
couldn't find it
so he tried a silver-tipped probe. Still he couldn't locate
the bullet.
They took Garfield back to
Washington
D.C. Despite the summer heat
they tried to keep him comfortable.
He was growing very weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet
probing
the wound over and over. In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell
who
was working on a little device called the telephone
to see if he could locate
the metal inside the president's body. He came
he sought
and he too failed.
The president hung on through July
through August
but in September he finally
died-not from the wound
but from infection. The repeated probing
which the
physicians thought would help the man
eventually
killed him. So it is with
people who dwell too long on their sin and refuse to release it to God.
Roger Thompson