A Happy Man With No Legs

You would never know from the joy that flows from his face the grief he caused, nor the grief he endured. To look at that face today you can't imagine the crime he committed or the anguish he's experienced.

Sandor once had a wife and children. Losing them brought searing pain, the kind that falls just shy of unbearable. One brutally cold day he was consumed with grief and fell asleep on the graves of his beloved family. 

No one could have foreseen the next tragedy: his legs became frost bitten and eventually had to be amputated.


If you were to visit Sandor now where he lives in a home for the elderly in Romania, you would quickly notice several things: 

• his Bible is always within reach.
• he smiles with his eyes, not just his mouth.
• if you are even a few years younger than him, you will have a deep desire to call him "Grandpa."

When I visited Sandor again this summer we threw our arms around each other and held on tight. Then he patted the space next to him on his bed, urging me to sit.  He couldn't wait a minute longer to show me the photographs of his baptism last month.

I know only a few details of Sandor's past, but enough to be filled with inexpressible joy at seeing the images of him robed in white, a modern-day "Saul becomes Paul."

"We were therefore buried with Christ through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may have new life." Romans 6:4