I\u2019m writing this just a day removed from an almost two-week long trip which culminated in my officiating at the wedding of Julie\u2019s sister in New Jersey. I managed to combine that event with a trip to \u201cmy happy place\u201d\u2026Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. You might think it strange that a battlefield is so special to me but it is. I\u2019ve had a lifelong interest in the Civil War and from the time I first visited Gettysburg in 1976 it\u2019s been the place I long to be (This trip there was my 20th!).<\/p>\n
What made this trip especially heartwarming and what actually inspired the title of this article requires some background. I used to buy and sell out-of-print military history books and particularly books on the Civil War. I did book shows around the country and published a catalog. One day back in 2000 I got a call from a woman looking for a book which I happened to have. She was so happy to learn I had the book that I just had to find out why she wanted it so bad.<\/p>\n
It turns out her church, located in Gettysburg, had been used as a field hospital after the battle and this book was the diary of a soldier who had been wounded and brought there. He spent over two weeks at her church and wrote about his experience. They wanted to use his writings as part of a special candlelight service they were developing. When she told me this I told her I would not sell her the book. Instead I would donate it as a gift from our congregation to hers. And so I sent the book off and didn\u2019t give it another thought. Until three weeks ago\u2026<\/p>\n
That was when Pastor Kelly took a call for me here at church. It was from Tom, a man who worshipped at this same Gettysburg church. He was now actively involved in this still ongoing candlelight service and said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if anyone ever really thanked Andy for this book so I just wanted to do just that!\u201d I called him back later that day and had a nice conversation which ended with him saying, \u201cIf you\u2019re ever out this way\u2026\u201d I quickly replied, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll be there at the end of the month!\u201d<\/p>\n
So on July 27th<\/sup>, I attended this special service at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Gettysburg. They put on a wonderful program and every person in the cast, including the pastor, made a point of thanking me for the book. So can you imagine having someone call you literally out of the blue to thank you for something you did thirteen years ago? Now what I did was really nothing. The book was not even very expensive but they still remember that someone once went out of his way to help them.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an old adage out there that says something to the effect that people will never remember what you say or even what you do but they will remember how you made them feel. I guess we\u2019ll never know all the ways we might touch others but isn\u2019t it good to know God continually gives us opportunities to do just that?<\/p>\n Blessings, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Pastor Andy<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m writing this just a day removed from an almost two-week long trip which culminated in my officiating at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[312,46,311,313,259],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pastorandy","tag-candlelight-service","tag-chill-on-the-hill","tag-civil-war-book","tag-donation","tag-pastor-andy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bayviewumc.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}