Alive in Christ

I witnessed this uncommon loving of an adversary at a stake conference many years ago. As I looked over the audience before the meeting began, I had an unusual impression to call on a particular woman in a yellow dress. I asked the stake president if he believed this woman would give a suitable talk if called on. He said he thought so. At my request, he later called her out of the audience to give a short talk.

As she came forward, I was apprehensive about what she might say. She introduced herself as a nurse employed to watch over patients in a maximum care facility. Her patients included one she described as "the most repulsive man" she had ever met. From his bedridden position, he did everything he could do to make life miserable for the nurses who were caring for him, including foul language, spitting on the floor, and constantly insulting them in other repulsive ways. She despised him.

One evening she heard a loud crash from this man's room. Responding, she ran to his room and was shocked to find him fallen out of bed and thrashing about in a pool of broken glass, liquid, and blood. In that moment, a profound change came over her. She felt an almost electric current of love from our Heavenly Father to this man. She saw him as a child of God.

As she knelt and held him in her arms and tried to give him comfort, he said, "I want to go home. I just want to go home." In a short time, he was dead. She testified that being brought to see a despised enemy like this as a child of God was one of the great spiritual experiences of her life.