A number of years ago a lady visited an orphanage and asked the matron, ‘Is there a child here nobody has offered to adopt?’
The matron replied, ‘There is. She’s ten years old, not much to look at, and she has a hunchback.’ The lady said, ‘That’s the child I want!’
Thirty-five years later the director of the Orphanage Inspection Department in Iowa submitted the following report on a state-run facility: ‘This home is outstanding. It’s clean, the food’s good, the children are well-cared-for, and the atmosphere is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. The matron, Mercy Goodfaith, has a soul that oozes love; she has such beautiful eyes I forgot how homely her face was—or that she was a hunchback.’
Because a Good Samaritan had the courage to love and nurture a little girl others overlooked, Mercy Goodfaith went on to share that same love with hundreds of other orphans.
Billy Graham, an American evangelical Christian evangelist, adds: ‘Those who have suffered the most are best able to comfort others … to empathize with [their] afflictions because of what they’ve experienced.' W4T edited
