'The Fisherman’s Rescue'

"There was a newspaper account about a man who had fallen through the ice while fishing. While he struggled and screamed from the water, he saw a man rushing across the ice with a rope over his shoulder. In a few moments, that man had the fisherman out of the water and on his way to the hospital. The man left the half-frozen fisherman in the ER, shook his hand and said, 'Someday you may find someone in need, and help that person because of today.' Only after the man left did the fisherman realize that he didn't even know his rescuer's name.

"The fisherman told a reporter that encountering this man had changed his life. As he lay in the hospital nervously realizing that he could have been a frozen corpse at the bottom of the lake, he wondered what he would have done if someone else needed his help. 'Never get involved if you don't have to,' had been his life's slogan. He thanked God that his rescuer did not have the same slogan to guide his life. This fisherman now determined to erase that attitude from his life, to reach out and share with people. He marveled at how the kindness and courage of one man who passed through his life for a little more than an hour, had transformed his life." - Rev. William A. Anderson (in In His Light)