Sunday Evening, June 29, 2008, 

This evening, Sis Joanne brought a lesson on providing loving service to God and to one another. Love cannot be seen, except in action. She pointed out that to love is to will the good of another. As illustrations, she used the stories of Balaam and his faithful serving donkey, Ruth and Naomi, and a King and his Falcon (taken from The Book of Virtues, William J. Bennet, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1993). All three stories illustrate acts of loving service, two involving animals.

In the third illustration, a King is traveling in the desert and leaves his servants behind as he stops to get water at a spring. The water is almost dried up, but it falls from a pool in the rock above his head. He holds his cup out and gathers water drop by drop. As he lifts the cup to his lips, the falcon swoops down and knocks it out of his hands. This happens 2 more times and on the last time, the cup falls into a crevice and the King can't get it. The King becomes very angry and kills falcon.  Still thirsty, the King climbs up the mountain to drink from a spring and finds a dead poisonous snake in the pool. The falcon was trying to save him and what is done cannot be undone. What looked like an act of violence on the part of the falcon, was actually an act of great love, followed by the ultimate sacrifice.

A father and his three children attended the meeting for the first time. They were guests who were staying at the Marriott. We were happy to have them with us, as well as Bro Steve Wingate and his family from Newark, Ohio and another young man who lives near Dayton, Ohio.