The late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, an exceptionally influential Christian, once told of an experience in his youth as follows:

One Christmas Eve when I was 12, I was out with my minister father doing some late Christmas shopping. We were both loaded down with packages and I was getting tired of it and a bit cross. I was thinking how good it would be to get home, when a beggar—a bleary-eyed, unshaven, dirty old man—came up to me, touched my arm with a hand like a claw, and asked for money. He was so repulsive that instinctively I recoiled. Softly my father said:

“Norman, it’s Christmas Eve. You shouldn’t treat a man that way.”

I was unrepentant. “Dad,” I complained, “he’s nothing but a bum.”

My father spoke strongly. “Maybe he hasn’t made much of himself, but he’s still a child of God.” He then handed me a dollar—a lot of money for those days and certainly for a preacher’s income. “I want you to take this and give it to that man,” he said. “Speak to him respectfully. Tell him you are giving it to him in Christ’s name.”

“Oh Dad,” I protested, “I can’t do anything like that.”

My father’s voice was firm. “Go and do as I tell you.”

So, reluctant and resisting, I ran after the old man and said, “Excuse me, sir. I give you this money in the name of Christ.”

He stared at the dollar bill, then looked at me in utter amazement. A wonderful smile came to his face, a smile so full of life and beauty that I forgot that he was dirty and unshaven. I forgot that he was ragged and old. With a gesture that was almost courtly, he took off his hat. Graciously he said, “And I thank you, young sir, in the name of Christ.”

(“It Happened on a Cincinnati Street”, Success Unlimited, [Chicago: Success Unlimited, Inc., December 1977], Vol. 24, No. 12.)