Al Janssen writes in "The Marriage Masterpiece":

Late one evening, while attending a conference in the German city of Hamburg, I boarded a commuter train and headed for an outlying suburb. The train car was completely empty at that late hour, and I dozed sleepily as it rattled past the harbor and then through the industrial district. Some minutes into the trip, an elderly man, dressed in rags and clearly suffering from a mental disability, shuffled into the car, closely followed by four teenagers. The young men, sporting an assortment of chains, tattoos, and body piercings, entered the car amid raucous laughter and loud talk. Almost immediately their attention focused on the old man who had seated himself near the center doors.

The four began to taunt him, shouting obscenities and making humiliating references to his mental condition. Then one of the teens shook up a half-filled can of beer and aimed the foamy spray directly into the old man's face. Without warning they began kicking his legs with their heavy boots and punching him in the arms and face.

Seated toward the back of the car, I looked on with a mixture of horror and fear as the terrible scene unfolded before me. I am not a big person; I am not trained in any of the martial arts; I have never considered myself particularly brave. Yet as a professing Christian I knew with absolute certainty that I could not simply sit back and watch this helpless old man be mercilessly beaten.

I whispered a deep prayer: "God, calm my fear. Show me the right thing to do." And then, without really giving my next actions any careful thought, I got out of my seat and walked purposefully toward the old man and his attackers. "Hans!" I called out in my best German, "Hans, how are you? It's been such a long time since we've seen each other!" And then, slipping between two of the surprised men, I embraced him, helped him to his feet and said, "Come sit with me, Hans. We have so much to catch up on."

The old man followed me toward the rear of the car and slid into the window seat. The teens looked on, not sure how they should respond. For a time they talked among themselves. But when the train pulled into the next stop, they got out. And at the following stop, "Hans" left as well, mumbling a word of thanks.

A love that is stronger than our fear. The common sense of our culture teaches that the only way to respond to fear is a cowardly retreat or a fight to the finish. The beauty and power of the gospel, by contrast, is that Jesus Christ offers a third alternative: trust in God —and in the transforming, surprising, power of love.