Nearly two and a half centuries before Dr. House began plying his trade as a diagnostician at Princeton University Medical Center, Benjamin Rush, M.D., earned his degree from that same institution.  He graduated from college when he was just 17 years old.  Immediately following his graduation ceremony he met someone who would be the greatest influence on his life.  That is truly saying something when one speaks of Dr. Benjamin Rush because he was acquainted with everyone. Studying medicine in Great Britain and on the Continent he met Whitherspoon, Voltaire, Hume, and Diderot.  Back in Philadelphia he befriended George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry, and Tom Paine (He came up with the title “Common Sense,” and arranged for that pamphlet to be published).  He was a member of the Continental Congress, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  He fought for Indian rights, health care for the poor, Women’s suffrage, Abolition, and against “spirituous liquors.” He was a busy man.

            Too busy to marry - so he thought.  He was not a dandy, or a flirt, but he did fall in love. When he fell, he seemed to fall hard.  He fell the first time when he was 22, and a medical student in Edinburgh. The young woman was Lady Leslie, the younger sister of his friend, Lord Leslie.  He fell for her while she played the pianoforte and sang the old Scots air “The Birks of Endermay.” She was a peer, however, and he had nothing to recommend himself but brilliance, good looks, and integrity.  Without title or fortune his hopes were doomed, and he never saw her again after he sailed for Paris in 1768.  He fell again when he was 28, and practicing medicine in Philadelphia.  Her name was Sarah Eve, and her father was a prosperous sea captain who encouraged his daughters to read widely, broaden their interests, and speak their mind (so do I), but she died of tuberculosis 2 weeks before their wedding.  Crushed, he thought he would never marry.

            Then, two years later he was at a dinner party, and reconnected with that person he met at his graduation 13 years earlier.  Immediately after his graduation ceremony, all those years ago, when graduates and guests formed a tangled, congratulatory crowd, Rush heard a little girl crying.  Her name was Julia, and she had been separated from her parents, whose brood was large, and who weren’t looking for her.  Rush picked her up, and after searching in vain for her parents,  carried her to her home, two miles away.  In his diary he writes that she treated him to “the most enjoyable patter” the whole journey. At that time she was four and he seventeen. When he was 30, and she seventeen he met her again, at a dinner party where she played the lute and sang the old Scots air “The Birks of Endermay.”  They were married in January, 1776, had 13 children together, and enjoyed an incandescently happy marriage until his death parted them in 1813.

            Of all the luminaries, and great men Rush had met by 1775, who would have guessed that the most important of all would be the little girl he carried home on graduation day?  You never know.

            I share this, my favorite founding father’s story, to make this one point - you never know. Would Philemon ever have guessed that his runaway slave, Onesimus, would meet and be converted by Paul in a Roman jail?  No, but he did.  My Great-grandmother never imagined she would fall and break her hip, or that the neighbor she had been so nasty to for so long would be the EMT to get the call – but she did, and he was.

            Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, because in this way some have entertained angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13.2).  This, of course, refers to the time Abraham, sitting beneath the oaks of Mamre, invited strangers on foot to come dine (Genesis 18).  These strangers were none other than the Lord and two angels. Hebrews 13.2 reminds us that we never know.  The strangers we meet may turn out to be angels, or someone who, through a twist of coincidence, will factor largely in our lives.  We do not know who they will be – but we know who they are.  They are souls, as valuable to and as loved by God as are we.  And so we should act accordingly.