Knox on Love

Pastor Wilson Knox launches a brand-new podcast called "Knox On," in which he and his friends from Odyssey explore a single topic through stories and sketches. For his very first episode, the topic is love - and, as he wryly admits, he can think of no better way to begin than with a story about revenge.

In that first tale, a cranky villager named Mrs. Shrew climbs the mountain to see the wise Mr. Sage. She announces that she plans to leave her husband, not because he has hurt her, but because he is simply annoying - his laugh, his surly moods, everything about him. Before she goes, she wants to get even. Mr. Sage, who knows her well, offers an ingenious plan: go home and act as if she truly loves her husband. She should praise him, pamper him, and convince him she adores him more than anything - and then, once he believes it, drop the bomb that she is leaving forever. Mrs. Shrew cackles with delight and rushes home to begin her sweet-on-the-outside, scheming-on-the-inside campaign of slippers, cold drinks, and schnitzel dinners. Two months later, Mr. Sage meets her in the marketplace and asks how the revenge went. To his delight, she never went through with it. The more kindness she showed her husband, the kinder he became in return, until she made a surprising discovery: "That I really do love him." By giving up her unloving ways and practicing love instead, she found the real thing - for both of them. Pastor Knox caps the story with Proverbs 11:17, noting that treating an enemy with kindness may or may not change them, but it will certainly help you.

The second story takes place about a hundred years ago, when a kindly bachelor named Frank strolls through a park and finds a little girl named Liesel in tears. Her favorite doll, Brune, has vanished from a park bench. Frank helps her search, and when the doll cannot be found, he promises to meet her at the same bench the next morning. When Liesel arrives, Frank is holding an envelope with her name on it - a letter, he says, from Brune herself, explaining that she has gone off to see the world and will write every day, with doves and sparrows delivering her letters to the bench. Day after day, Frank reads Liesel wonderful letters about the doll's adventures: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a seasick Channel crossing to London, the green Scottish highlands, the African veldt, the Amazon jungle, and the Statue of Liberty in New York. At last a letter announces that Brune has returned and is waiting by the gazebo. There sits a beautiful doll - but Liesel is confused, because it looks nothing like Brune. A final note tucked behind the doll explains that her travels have changed her, but she is still and always shall be Liesel's Brune. Liesel embraces her friend and takes her home. But Frank never comes to the park again; a short time later, Liesel's mother learns that he has died. Years pass, Liesel grows up and has children of her own, and one day she finds the old, worn doll on a dusty closet shelf. Hidden in its frayed seams is one last tiny letter from Frank: everything you love is likely to be lost, but "love will always return to you in a different way," and better than before.

For his final story, Pastor Knox turns to a true account from World War II, when love appeared in a place of great adversity. In September 1943, German forces occupy the Greek island of Zakynthos. The commander, Oberst Behrens, orders Mayor Loukas Karrer to hand over, within twenty-four hours, a list of every Jew on the island so that SS squads can deport them - to what the mayor grimly recognizes as the death camps. Anguished, Karrer prays for help and takes the list to Bishop Chrysostomos, the island's wise church leader. The two men pray together and settle on a daring plan. The next day the bishop himself delivers the list to the furious commander, boldly declaring that the Jews are human beings made in the image of God and that he answers to a higher authority than the Third Reich. When Behrens unfolds the paper, he finds only two names on it: the mayor's and the bishop's. The people of the island are one, the bishop explains - if the Jews are taken, "we shall go with them and share their fate." He warns the commander that God is watching and his soul hangs in the balance. The stunned officer postpones the roundup to consult his superiors, giving the mayor time to warn the Jewish community and arrange for fellow islanders to hide them. The islanders protect their hidden neighbors for over a year until liberation in late 1944, and while Jewish communities on the other Greek islands are wiped out, not a single one of the 275 Jews of Zakynthos is deported. For their courage, Bishop Chrysostomos and Mayor Karrer are later honored as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Israel.

Pastor Knox closes with 1 Corinthians 13 - love bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things - and draws the threads together: whether facing an ungrateful spouse, a lost doll, or an abuse of power, "true love always costs something." He asks his listeners how their own true love is doing, thanks Whit, Connie, Jason, Zoe, and Eugene for lending their voices, and signs off until the next Knox On.