What is the Most Important Thing You Have Done in Your Life?

Ninety-two year old John Shear would have no trouble answering that question. For 51 years, Mr. Shear has been a paddock guard at the Santa Anita Park racetrack.

Two years ago, he saw a runaway horse about to trample a little girl on the track. After he shouted to everyone to get out of the way, he saw this little girl just standing there.

He knocked her to the ground and shielded her with his 5-foot, 90-year-old body, saving her life as he endured the crushing by the horse’s hooves.

He spent the next seven weeks in the hospital and somehow survived this ordeal, yet he always wanted to meet the child that he saved.

“I have always wanted to meet her,” he told ABC News two years after the accident, “and I was sad that I never got the chance to meet her when I got better.”

The little girl, Roxy Key, now eight years old, was recently in a ballet recital. John Shear drove to the recital to meet Roxy and her parents.

In an evening ABC TV news program earlier this week, Mr. Shear said that of all the things he had done in his 92 years, saving Roxy’s life was by far the most important.

Most of us will never directly save another person’s life.

Sadly, last week our precious little six-year-old girl cousin, Rose, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Among other problems, she’s had some tummy aches recently.

Today she asked her younger sister, Ella, to rub her tummy. Ella did just that. It may very well be the most important thing Ella has done in her young life.

What is the most important thing you’ve done in your life? Think about it.

AMS