Christian author Tim Stafford recently shared a moving story about his mentor Max Dunn, who died at the age of 95:

Max had worked as an executive for a big department store chain. He also served on the organizing committee for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. After his retirement he did a master's degree in world mission at Fuller Seminary, then traveled all over the world in a wide variety of missions.

Max was good-looking, athletic, and friendly. But when I met him, what Max most loved to do—passionately—was to visit men at the local Salvation Army drug and alcohol rehab program. He went nearly every day, meeting individually with men and teaching an anger management class.

As much as I admired Max's capability, I admired his friendliness more. He really loved those men, which is saying something. By the time somebody gets to a free, residential, long-term rehab program, they have usually burned every last bridge to family and friends. Many if not most have been in and out of jail and prison. They have little education and many tattoos. In short, they tend to be quite different from the people Max met [in the business world]. I don't know whether Max really noticed. Even when he was in terrible pain, he wanted to be at the Salvation Army more than anywhere.

I did wonder how Max became so indiscriminate in his friendliness. It really was unusual. His peers in business were willing to help out in good causes, but they didn't choose to hang out with addicts. Max did. Max had a profound spiritual transformation that helped him know that Jesus is alive and active through the Holy Spirit. For people like Max, that turned faith from a list of beliefs to an experience—an experience of Jesus. That explains, I think, why Max liked everybody. If you want to see somebody who talked to everybody, helped everybody, believed in everybody, but especially the poor and the desperate, that would be Jesus. I think Max learned it from him.