Arms Linked in Berlin

In the summer of 1936, Jesse Owens stood in Berlin's Olympic Stadium before eighty thousand spectators, many of them cheering for Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy. Owens, a Black American, had already shattered that myth with gold in the 100 meters. Now, in the long jump, his fiercest competitor was Luz Long — tall, blond, blue-eyed, everything the Nazi propaganda machine celebrated.

What happened next defied every expectation. After Owens won gold and Long took silver, the German athlete embraced Owens in full view of Hitler's box. They walked arm in arm across the infield while the stadium fell into stunned silence. Long later wrote to Owens, and the two maintained a friendship until Long was killed fighting in Sicily in 1943.

Years later, Owens said, "It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have, and they wouldn't be a plating on the twenty-four-carat friendship I felt for Luz Long."

The Apostle Paul wrote that love "always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres" (1 Corinthians 13:7). Luz Long's embrace cost him something. Real love always does. It crosses the lines that hatred draws. It reaches out when silence would be safer.

The love God calls us to is never convenient. It is always costly, always brave, and it always walks toward the person everyone else walks away from.