Letter: One solitary life

He was born of a peasant woman in an obscure village. He grew up in another small village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never traveled more than 200 miles from his home. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials except himself.

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away, one denied him and another betrayed him. He was turned over to his enemies and endured the mockery of a trial and then nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothes, the only thing he owned on this earth. When He was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone and today, He is the central figure of the human race. I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have sat, all the kings that reigned put together have never affected lives of men and women as much as that one solitary life.

— Fred Dyson, Eagle River

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