COSTLY
LOVE

Topics: Affection; Caring; Compassion; Death; Disease; Love; Medical Care; Misery; Motherhood; Sickness

References: Matthew 3:17; Romans 8:35; Ephesians 2:4–5; 3:14–19; 1 John 3:1; 4:18

Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria, had a little boy who became very sick with black diphtheria. Doctors quarantined the boy and told the mother to stay away.

She tried, until one day she overheard him whisper to the nurse, “Why doesn’t my mother kiss me anymore?” Princess Alice ran to her son and smothered him with kisses. Within a few days, both died.

—Max Lucado, “Down Deep from Heaven,” Today’s Christian (March–April 2004)