Courage in the face of danger.

I been thinking a lot lately about Courage in the face of danger. To protect everything you love and care about even if it means risking your own life to do it. Jesus and his death on the cross is prefect example of that. Dying for us the human race so we who follow his lead does not go to hell and others have a way to escape the punishment that we all deserve. In spirit of  these three passages I wanted to point to people in history who shown these movement to actions in the face of great dangers.
John 15: 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Galatians 6:9  And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

1 john 3: 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

chief shenandoah and his tribe not only joined the Revolutionary War with the Colonist while most of his people were joining with the British which made him and his tribe a target by his own people but also save Washington and his men by giving them corn during their time in Valley Forge. He did what he felt was right not what was popular and made a stand for freedom for his people and the people around him. Sacrificing a lot to do the right thing. If you want to read more about his tribes stands click here.

Lydia Bixby and her sons are another great example of this. During the Civil War. A war to free slaves and to unite a nation Mrs. Bixby sons all went to fight for others freedom and all ended up dying to help to free slaves from their bonds so they can have the right to be treated as men and women and not cattle to be sold. Which so moved President Lincoln he had to personally write to her.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

And there are plenty of others in history who have done the same. People like Michael Murphy Dietrich Bonhoeffer and George Washington just to name a few all have these qualities in common. They stood up for what they believed and all paid dearly two with there lives. The point in all of this God calls us to sacrificial love even if it means our own lives. When he calls us to pick up our cross and follow him. He calls us to his pain. Not only pain he suffered in following God but the pain he felt for others who suffer. He wants us to be there to help and to die to protect others from harm. For as Jesus himself said " Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."