All of us yearn for a hero...someone to spark a flame in our souls, someone to inspire us to live beyond ourselves, someone to help us live up to the potential our Creator has placed within us.Jesus is the hero in your soul. His awe-inspiring love enables you to reach beyond your limitations and become the person God created you to be. Your heart will soar as you read Jim McGuiggan's stirring devotional and inspirational stories about everyday men and women who have been touched by the Savior's hand and who live to reflect his nature.Allow the Rescuer to touch your life -- you'll be forever changed by the impressions left by the Savior's touch.

Jim McGuiggan, a powerful speaker and seasoned writer, has written numerous inspirational books, including The God of the Towel, Jesus the Hero of Thy Soul, Where the Spirit of the Lord Is . . . , Let Me Count the Ways, and Celebrating the Wrath of God. Born in Belfast, Ireland, McGuiggan has studied and taught the Bible in America at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Since he and his wife of 44 years, Ethel, returned to Ireland, he has worked with a congregation of God's people outside of Belfast.

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Chapter One: Compassion

Dead at Thirty-Two

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

—Matthew 9:36

About two hundred years ago (or was ityesterday?), Alice lived two doors away from us. She didn’tprofess to be a Christian, and those of us who knew her well knewshe had struggles, like the rest of us, which she didn’talways win. But Christ loved her. And, Christian or not, heworked in her life, making her cheerful, sensitive, sympathetic,and generous. Like so many others, she had a hard life. She hadfour children, serious heart trouble, and a hard-drinking husbandwho gave her many a beating.

I can still see her in the street, leaningagainst her window with her arms folded, wisecracking with theneighbors, milkman, or anyone who showed the slightest interestin being friendly. More than once I caught her crying, wonderinghow she was going to get through the week with so little moneyand so many things to be done with it. She was thin, too thin,and her skin was clear and smooth, almost transparent. (With skinlike hers, we could easily see the bruises.) She kept her hairswept up, and her eyes were strikingly beautiful—pale blueand big and round. She died undergoing her second heart surgery.I think she was thirty-two years old.

Alice reminds me of all the people I’veknown who, day after day, without end, struggle to keep theirheads above water. Never, in all their lives, are they able to goto a shop and buy something without first doing seriousarithmetic. Never, from the cradle to the grave, are they surethe money for rent, heat, food, and clothing is going to bethere. It’s that endless grind that beats so many people,that takes the light out of their eyes. They march up from thegates of birth with sunshine on their faces, dreaming dreams,purposing purposes, but life just wears them down. Then we putthem in the ground at the age of thirty-two, look at each othersadly, and shrug in helplessness.

It’s at times like these that you hungrilysearch for moments when you did something comforting for theAlices in your life, something kind, something that brought asmile or a happy, speechless look of gratitude. Not so you canbrag and think you weren’t such a bad neighbor after all.No, it’s just that it becomes important to know that peoplelike Alice didn’t die without a moment of knowing somebodycared, without friendly arms to hold them while they sobbed.It’s at times like these that your heart remembers and isglad for all the moments when cups of sugar were loaned orborrowed or packets of tea were halved.

I’m sick and tired of comfortableChristians dismissing other people’s heartache as if it madeno difference in how those people respond to God. I’m tiredof comfortable Christians receiving endless pulpit and booktherapy because they have a "tough time," while peoplelike Alice (who number in the multimillions) are given thetake-it-or-leave-it kind of offer of the gospel.

Take me, for example. As well as I think I knowwhat I’m talking about in this matter, as deeply as I thinkI feel about it, I still slip into the notion that we all have anequal shot at life. That just isn’t true! But if I know itisn’t true, how can I forget that so quickly and easily? Whydo I look at people and assume that each of them has the samechance to hear and respond?

Didn’t I hear that the people ofIsrael—beaten and despairing because of generations ofexploitation and oppression—didn’t I hear that when theGood News came, they weren’t able to hear it because oftheir pain?1 Their hard lives had beaten the hope out of them;their long, unchanging weeks and months and years made it toohard for them to believe. And God took all that into account!

Oh sweet Lord Jesus, what am I going to doabout what I’m writing here? What are we who are readingthis going to do? Can you not enter our lives with greater visionand enable us to see Alice all around us? Are we deliberatelykeeping you out? Are we afraid to see? We seem to be able todismiss this whole matter with such ease. At least, I seem to beable to. I wish I could believe I am the only one, but I knowI’m not.

Lord, have you been speaking to us all along,but because we have preferred to hear other things, you havedecided to let us go our way? Don’t leave us this way.It’s so ugly, and we long for your beauty.

Excerpted from Jesus, Hero of Thy Soul by Jim McGuiggan
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