A boy who was a hero...

"But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves." James 1:22

      Not all the heroes are in story-books. No, indeed. Some of them are living quite close to us, but we would hardly guess that they are heroes, because a real hero never tells about the splendid things he does. A real hero, you know, always keeps his heroism to himself. You can always be sure when a boy tells you about the great brave things he has done that he is a bully and not a hero. A hero never talks about himself.
       Here is a real hero story. It is about a boy who ran an elevator in an old shaky, shackly office building, in Philadelphia. The people who knew him called him Billy. He was a lean, freckle-faced boy, with red hair, and nobody guessed that Billy was a hero. But he was, as this story will show. One day the old building began to tremble and shake, and then one of the walls fell out and the crowd gathered in the street and looked up at the windows of the building where the men and women and little children were, and wondered what would become of them. But Billy never waited to wonder, but ran his old elevator up to the topmost story and came back with it crowded with frightened women and little children. He did that a second time, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth. Up and down he went for nine times until only one side of the building was standing and the shaft of the elevator was bare and was swaying to and fro like a tree in the wind. The policemen tried to drag the boy away from his post, and the great crowd cried for him to stop, but he pulled the chain and began to rise again to the upper floor. " There's two men up there yet," said Billy, and away he went to the top, facing death every minute, but never waiting to guess what the end might be. Then through the cloud of dust the old elevator was seen coming down and in it there were three people. As it touched the ground, the other wall fell out, but the two men and Billy came out into the street unhurt. You should have heard the people cheer! They knew then that Billy, with his red hair and his freckled face, was a hero, and they wanted to catch him and carry him on their shoulders and make him say a speech and take up a collection for him, but Billy could not be found anywhere. He had slipped off unnoticed through the crowd, for it was supper time, and he had gone home to his mother.
       This story does not need any sermon. If it did, all that the sermon could say would be: " Do things, don't talk about them. Do brave, kind, heroic, beautiful things, not because people see you, but because you are a hero at heart and because there are brave, kind, heroic, beautiful things to be done, and because God sees you." Hugh Kerr

                                                      The meaning of trust or trustworthy.