My first book, Join the Adventure, espouses a simple action plan that was originally told to me by my friend Gordon Saunders:
- Be there
- Pay attention
- Do what you can
- Tell the truth
I just saw a report that a hockey fan, who intends to go to medical school, illustrated this plan beautifully:
Here are some snippets of a report from World Magazine:
Assistant equipment manager Brian “Red” Hamilton was moving equipment on the Vancouver Canucks’ bench on October 23 in Seattle. He noticed a woman behind the bench pressing her phone against the plexiglass. A message in a large font caught Hamilton’s attention. The message expressed Nadia Popovici’s concern: She believed a mole on Hamilton’s neck was cancerous.
She was right.
…
Popovici could have looked the other way. She could have ignored her intuition. After all, banging on the glass to give someone negative news can’t have been comfortable. But her action displayed the sentiment of Mark 12:31 when Jesus admonishes, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The game in Seattle in October was the final stop on the Canucks’ opening road trip. Within a couple days of being back in Vancouver, Hamilton had team doctors look at the mole. They expressed concern, and Hamilton had it removed a few days later and sent off for a biopsy. The results showed cancerous cells in the mole. Doctors then removed a larger area of skin around the mole.
…
Hamilton has been with the Canucks for nearly 20 years. With the chaos of an NHL game, Hamilton was amazed Popovici was able to notice a mole he had no idea existed.
“How she saw it boggles my mind,” Hamilton says. “It wasn’t very big. I wear a jacket. I wear a radio on the back of my jacket that hooks on so the cords are there.”
Popovici has done a lot of volunteer work in hospitals, including a stint helping in a cancer ward. “I saw his and I was like, wow, that is a picture-perfect example of what a melanoma looks like,” she says.
This story is a picture-perfect example of be there, pay attention, do what you can, tell the truth.
There is no one who takes notice of me… (Psalm 142.4, ESV)
As [Jesus] passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. (John 9.1, ESV)
And as [Jesus] passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth… (Mark 2.14, ESV)