Battling cancer takes an immense physical and emotional toll on the human body. When beloved Latin and Bible teacher Ben Ellis faced a difficult cancer battle, his devoted students rallied to support him. In a heartwarming gesture, they gathered outside his house and sang hymns for him. The entire high school student body at Nashville's Christ Presbyterian Academy turned up in massive numbers at the teacher's house - 400 students, to be precise, as reported by The Sun.
Representative Image Source: Pexels I Photo by Max Fischer
The Bible teacher was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, for which he was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Unfortunately, the cancer had rapidly spread to his lungs, so the family stopped any further treatment on September 7. His wards attended Christ Presbyterian Academy, the school where he taught students ranging from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. After learning about Ellis' condition, the students were determined to join him in his battle against cancer and decided to surprise him at his home.
Representative Image Source: Pexels I Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko
A close family member captured the touching moment as the students poured their hearts into singing for their ailing teacher. It was later passed on to country singer Tim McGraw, who shared the clip on his Facebook page with a beautiful caption. It read, "A friend sent this to me today. Ben Ellis is a Nashville area high school teacher battling cancer. The entire student body (400+ students plus HS faculty) drove to his house to worship with him. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family..... So precious and kind."
In the video, we see 400 pupils lined up outside Ellis' house, singing hymns for him. On the other side of the frame, we see the teacher leaning forward into view, singing along and embracing this special moment, with his wife standing beside him. As Headmaster Nate described, the heartwarming scene was a “place where the veil between heaven and Earth felt very thin," per TODAY. The headmaster even commented on the interaction between the students and the teacher, "Ben said back to the students that he loved them and that they need to continue to love each other as well."
The video went viral within a few days on the internet. When Ellis learnt of the video’s reach, he described the experience in his blog on his CaringBridge page, "Last Wednesday, the entire CPA high school came and sang songs of praise and worship under my bedroom window. It was beautiful and unforgettable."
The Facebook clip shared by McGraw has managed to gather over 35 million views. One user, @johannah.gaines, commented, "Thank you so much for sharing this!! So kind! What a gift they have to him and his family. Very moving. God's presence was felt through the video!" As reported by TODAY, Ellis unfortunately passed away a few days after his students honored him with their performance.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.