Many years ago two young men with long records of crime and delinquency robbed the YMCA on the lower east side of New York City. On their way out of the door they noticed a man at the telephone switchboard. Fearing that he would call the police, the young men grabbed him and beat him savagely with brass knuckles and a black jack. Thinking that he was dead, they then stuffed him behind a radiator near the swimming pool and left.

Later that evening Gertrude Ederle, the famous swimmer, was walking near the pool and stepped in some blood, slipped, screamed, and then found Donald Tippet's body. Tippet was rushed to the hospital where for days he lingered between life and death. Eventually he lived, but one eye had been so badly damaged that it could not be saved.

Meanwhile the two young men were caught and brought to trial. Their past record assured they would get a long sentence. At this point, Donald Tippet did an amazing thing. He asked that the two young men be put in his custody. He believed in them, believed they could be changed.

One of the boys refused to change and was soon caught for another crime. The other boy however was more receptive. He went on to college. Eventually he went to medical school and became a surgeon, an eye surgeon. The late Bishop Everett Palmer wrote of this surgeon, "I wonder if he ever performs one of those delicate operations without stopping to think of that night in the YMCA and of a young man, who later became Bishop Donald Tippet of the San Francisco area, whose confidence changed his life."

There is something life changing about that kind of love. Who could help but be touched by it? What we need today is not a revival that would bring more people into church. What we need is a revival that would motivate us to take Christ's redemptive love out into the world.