WWJD

In life you meet all kinds of people. Sometimes you meet people and spend the rest of your life doing everything humanly possible to never see that person again. However, there are people who are just easy and fun to be around. People with magnetic personalities. These “magnetic” people draw others to them. I don’t know what it is, but no matter what you’re doing, it’s hard to not enjoy yourself around this type of person.

My father-in-law is a magnetic person.

I first met Don about a year and a half before I married his daughter. Melissa and I weren’t even actually dating yet when she took some of her friends to his house to just hang out before the evening’s festivities. I remember we were sitting there talking, but not really doing much of anything when he got home from work. Don hadn’t been there five minutes when things turned around. It’s been almost 20 years, and I don’t even remember what he did that was so fun, but I remember being a little sad when it was time to leave.

Some people just have that effect.

Over that past 16 years that Melissa and I have been married, I’ve learned a lot about Don and his magnetic personality. He has a wonderfully eclectic group of friends that range from multi-millionaire entrepreneurs to Cuban refugees who struggle to make ends meet, and everything in between.

I wouldn’t characterize Don as a really religious person. He is a Christian, and his relationship to God is first of all his own business, and second, none of mine. He is a member of an Episcopal church and for years sang in the choir. At times he comes to church with us.

Last Sunday Don got a call from his friend who is from Cuba. Seems this friend has been staying with a family who literally had no money for food. I don’t know the details of the situation, and I’m not sure Don does. I’m not sure Don even asked, but the kind of heart that Don has couldn’t let these people go hungry.

It would have been easy to just give them some money, or point them to one of the many social service agencies here in Dallas, but that’s not how Don works. He took the whole family, kids and all, to the store and spent a couple of hundred dollars and turned things around for this poor family.

He didn’t ask them questions about how they’re managing their money. He didn’t ask them about what they were going to do in future to ensure they wouldn’t be in this situation again. He didn’t ask them to only purchase the bare minimum. He didn’t ask them anything. He just told them to get whatever they want. The tears of a mother who wasn’t going to have to send her babies to bed hungry, was all the thanks he needed.

Don has never worn a WWJD bracelet, and I’d be surprised if he even knows what one is. But if you asked Don what Jesus would have done for this family who desperately needed help, I bet he could tell you…cause I’m quite sure he showed you.