To whom can you offer real sacrificial care?

David McNeil’s obituary made me cry. I am not ashamed to admit it. Some of my friends perhaps think I shed a tear a little too easily, but this time around I can assure you it was fully justified.

My tears were not those of sadness, nor of joy, but being profoundly moved at the life this man had been called to live as a result of the circumstances he found himself in.

He was not, as far as I can see, a believer. Nor was his wife, whom we shall meet in a moment. But in the so-called common – yet still supernatural – grace of God, this man lived a life of dedication, service and compassion that should challenge every believer, and certainly challenged me.

David was a photographer, a pretty successful one. He’d been Rangers Football Club’s official photographer. He was one of only two photographers allowed at the business end of St Paul’s Cathedral for Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981. He was employed by The Times newspaper as a picture editor where he met his wife, Melanie. She was a journalist working for the paper, but in 2010 was paralysed after breaking her neck falling from her horse.

She detailed her suffering and struggles in a weekly column. She became the well-known part of the couple. And David? He gave it all up to care for her.

Melanie gave him the option, according to her account. She said he was free to leave. He was free to live his life to the full and not be encumbered by the 24-hour care she would need as a result of the accident. But in an amazing moment, the hard-nosed Glaswegian David declined. “Don’t be stupid,” he said to her.

For the next 13 years he did the bulk of Melanie’s caring. It was the remarkable work of love in action. In his latter years he was diagnosed with Alzheimers, and in a twist worthy of Hollywood, Melanie, despite her infirmities, became his carer too.

As I said, I cried.

Such love, commitment, thoughtfulness, duty, sacrifice. McNeil gave up everything to keep the wedding promise he had made.

Sometimes it takes stories such as these to show Christians the way. The care we show to others should outshine even this sacrificial model. For those who are married, it certainly applies to spouses. But we might extend the duty: for children to parents; for parents to children. Above all, within the family of God, married or not, older or younger, the same standard of care, love and sacrifice should run through our service.

Make no mistake: such care is costly. Perhaps you are not called to offer this kind of care right at the moment? Yet maybe there is someone in church who is, and they need caring for too. How could you care for the carers? The church is meant to be a loving community of care. Such sacrificial love adorns the gospel and makes it beautiful.

Ultimately, I don’t know what motivated David McNeil. I, and others, can only guess. But the outcome was clear. Believers are motivated by something more than altruism or selfish self pity. If the Spirit is at work in us, He will produce amazing fruit, including a desire to look out for others and consider them better than ourselves.

In a final twist, something else happened on that day when McNeil was standing by the altar snapping photos of the Prince and Princess. That is the very day that I became a Christian. I was on a camp and remember watching the Royal Wedding in the daytime before giving my life to Christ in the evening meeting. It was a Wednesday.

The new life I received that day works in me to produce the loving, caring, faithful service that McNeil displayed to his wife, but in me it is for all the saints. My tears were not just those of wonder, but hope too; that I may be this kind of Christian.