Any person who has listened to, read about, connected with, or been influenced by Bob Goff will know that his personality speaks louder than any book review could. Any person that has not heard of Bob (it’s how he prefers to be addressed)…well, they should start with one of his stories.
The September 11 tragedy had recently struck, so Bob and Sweet Maria (his wife) brought their young children together to help them make sense of what had happened. After talking through the events, Bob and Sweet Maria asked their children what they would like to say, do, or ask if they could meet with the world’s leaders. His youngest explained that they should invite the leaders to spend the night at their house. His middle child suggested that they ask each leader what they hoped for. The oldest said, if need be, the family should go to the world leaders (just in case the sleep-over didn’t fly) and make a video interview of each leader’s response to the hope question. So, Bob took them seriously. He had the kids write a letter to each of the world’s presidents, prime ministers, and dictators (names and addresses gratefully discovered on the CIA’s public website!) asking for an audience – hundreds and hundreds of letters. As you might expect, Bob’s children received numerous, wonderfully official and polite sounding no-thank-yous. That was the pattern. That is, until the State House of Bulgaria broke the pattern with an equally official invitation to the national palace. Shortly after, the prime minister of Switzerland invited the children to Bern. Then an invitation arrived from the president of Israel in Jerusalem. All told, the children received 29 invitations to meet with heads of state from around the globe – even one from the Russian government! And, again, Bob and Sweet Maria took their kids seriously. They had made a promise that if any of the leaders offered to meet, the family would accept. I won’t ruin the rest of the story, but suffice it to say, there are a number of world leaders who now hold keys to the front door of the Goff house, and some of these keys have been used.
I tell this story from Bob’s life for two reasons. First, if you have never met him or heard of him, you now have a glimpse of what is literally, his everyday life. Second, and perhaps more importantly, you also now have an introduction to Love Does and the message that Bob seeks to share. Each of Bob’s 34 short chapters starts with an equally engaging story as the one above, and in the final few pages of the chapter, Bob enters the narrative to explain that this – whatever story he has just told – is another facet of what love does. You may be adventuring on a humanitarian mission in Africa, or working through the aftermath with the person who nearly killed you when they T-boned your car, but wherever your day has taken you, Bob would like you to know that, in the name of Jesus Christ, love does. It dreams. It dares. It reaches. It goes. Love does.
