City On Our Knees

A break from the comic book world today. I started reading the book City on Our Knees by Toby Mac today. I've had the book for a while and only just now got around to starting it. I listen to K-LOVE radio, and I had previously heard some brief snippets of the stories shared in this book on there.

I had to share the very first story that I read though on this blog today. The one thing you need to know about me is it generally takes a lot to make me get broken up emotionally. I don't cry at sad movies and stuff like that, so something I read has to be pretty emotional in nature to touch me. This story did. I'm sure some of you have even read this story already since it got press when it was going on I guess back in 2002.

The story was about this young girl who was diagnosed with a form of cancer called neuroblastoma. Before she had turned one year old, she had to endure a 12 hour surgery to remove cancerous tumors from her body which left her paralyzed at the time from the chest down. Doctors said she would be unable to even feel her legs again even if her cancer went into remission. Two weeks later, she wiggled her leg with some coaxing from her mom and dad. By two she was crawling around her house albeit with leg braces at that time. Eventually, she even was able to walk on her own without the braces. Her cancer was not gone, however, and by four she was in the hospital receiving intense chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.

This is where the story really begins to touch the heart though. While recovering from that procedure, she shared an idea she had with her mom about opening a lemonade stand (you know one of those little childhood stands that you see occasionally) in order to donate the money to her doctors to help them find a cure for childhood cancers like hers. Her mother assumed they would probably get a small amount of donations from the stand. This little four year old girl wrote up her little plan and with the help of her big brother, they made $2,000 with her little lemonade stand that summer. The story progressed and by 2004, her little lemonade stand had grown into a nationwide charity event that raised over $1 million to fund cancer research. The little girl didn't live to the end of 2004, but her dream lives on even today in Alex's Lemonade Stands which have raised more than $30 million for more than eighty cancer-related projects that sek cures and treatments.

That story alone means I will be reading this book through the weekend to find more inspiration for my life and what I should be doing to help others, because if a 4 year old little girl can do something like this, what can the rest of us do.

The book overall is a book of inspirational stories like this to show how people have shared love with others throughout the world at different times. If this one story is any indication of the inspiration that can be drawn from this book, everyone should read it. We all need to learn to stop looking out just for ourselves and consider the impact we could have on the world around us.

I recommend this book to everyone even though it is written by a Christian artist to illustrate how we can share the love of Christ. I think anyone who has a heart can benefit from reading this book.

Thanks for reading.