First Story:<\/p>\n
404 A.D.\u00a0 A monk named Telemachus felt let by the Spirit of God to travel to Rome.\u00a0 He found himself following the crowds heading to the Colosseum.\u00a0 When he saw the horror of gladiators set to kill each other for the entertainment of the crowd, he was so moved with indignation that he jumped over the wall, confronted the gladiators, stood between them, and shouted, \u201cIn the name of Christ, forbear [stop].\u201d\u00a0 He was obviously attacked and fatally wounded.\u00a0 But he kept repeating, \u201cIn the name of Christ, forbear,\u201d until he died.<\/p>\n
And the rest of the story—That was the last time gladiators fought in the Roman Colosseum.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Second Story:<\/p>\n
In the late 1970\u2019s I had a student named Katy Telemachus in my fourth grade class in Hollywood, Florida.\u00a0 She was sweet, but frail because she needed a liver transplant.\u00a0 The time came for a donor match, and the operation was successful (paid for entirely by her father, who owned an upscale restaurant in Ft. Lauderdale).\u00a0 Katy\u2019s life was transformed, and she became a happy, lively girl.\u00a0 Her father showed his appreciation by treating us and the principal to a very special evening at the restaurant—a treasured memory.<\/p>\n
And the rest of the story—A few years after we moved to Texas in 1990, we got a letter from friends in Florida, with a newspaper article.\u00a0 It told of three teenagers robbing a man\u2019s home, resulting in his murder.\u00a0 Katy was one of the teenagers, and the man who was killed was her father.\u00a0\u00a0 I have no information since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First Story: 404 A.D.\u00a0 A monk named Telemachus felt let by the Spirit of God to travel to Rome.\u00a0 He found himself following the crowds heading to the Colosseum.\u00a0 When he saw the horror of gladiators set to kill each other for the entertainment of the crowd, he was so moved with indignation that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith_based","category-family","category-inspire_lifter","category-political-cultural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}