Make sure to read: 1) The Second Mile Award; and 2) Who is Erwin A. Thompson.
The Second Mile
The Second Mile is a guiding force in my father’s life. We grew up with it. He named a novel, The Second Mile after this Bible verse: Matthew 5:41: “And whosoever shall compel you to go a mile, go with him, go twain.
My father says in his preface to The Second Mile that: “This was part of the custom of the country in Christ’s time, that a Roman Soldier could compel any Jew to carry his burden for a mile. I don’t know how these exact distances were determined or what happened when the mile limit was reached. Probably the soldier had to carry his own burden.
“The idea of this passage is that we should all go beyond the fixed limits of exactly what is required of us in our work and in our relations with other people. Going beyond this point is often referred to by those who have some Biblical knowledge as ‘going the second mile.'”
My father often stopping to help stranded motorists and men endangered under enemy fire, so it is with particular meaning that this award dedicated to my father and based on his life should bear this name.
View from Evergreen Heights on the bluffs above the Mississippi at sunset.
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Thanks to my blogging buddy Eden Maxwell for proposing the idea of an award dedicated to my father. Click here to learn more about Eden, his artwork, and his book “An Artist Empowered” .