Consider this story I recently heard…
The day is over and you are driving home. The radio tells about a faraway village in which three persons have died suddenly, strangely, of a flu of unknown origin. It’s kind of interesting.
On Sunday, coming home from church, you hear another news release. Only now it’s not three villagers in some remote part of India, but thirty thousand persons in a city near that remote village. Tonight all the major news channels carry the story.
By Monday morning mysterious death is the lead story. For it is not just India; it’s Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran. And before you know it, you’re hearing this story everywhere. Medical authorities are calling it the mystery flu. Panic strikes. The Surgeon General is advising that once the mystery flu is contracted, it lies dormant for about a week. Four days of unbelievable pain and suffering follow; then death—certain death!
Britain closes its borders but it is too late. South Hampton. Liverpool. London. All contaminated.
It’s Tuesday morning when the President of the United States makes the following announcement: “Because of a national security risk, all flights to and from Europe and Asia have been cancelled.
”Wednesday night. You are at a church prayer meeting. Somebody runs in from the parking lot shouting, “Turn on a radio! Turn on a radio!” The church listens to a little transistor radio held to the pulpit microphone: “Two women are lying in a Long Island hospital dying from the mystery flu.”It has come to America! Within hours it seems, this thing sweeps across the country.
Medical personnel–the best we have–are working around the clock. No progress reported. No antidote found. Efforts seem futile. Oregon. California. Arizona. Texas. Florida. South Carolina. Massachusetts. It’s just sweeping in from the borders.
And then, all of a sudden, the news comes out. The code has been broken! The antibody has been isolated. A cure is imminent. An antidote can be made. But blood is needed: pure, uninfected blood of a very rare type. And so, sure enough, all through the Midwest, through all those channels of emergency broadcasting, everyone is being asked “to go to your hospital and have you blood analyzed. When you hear the sirens go off in your neighborhood, please make your way quickly to the hospitals.
”When you and your family get down there late on that Friday night, a long line of friends and neighbors are waiting to be screened. Nurses are running about in the waiting room and patient rooms taking blood, labeling it, and handing it to couriers who whisk it down the hall to the laboratory. You patiently wait with your family to get into the hospital. Then more nurses come on duty and start working frantically among those in the parking lot.
Finishing with your family at last, the attending nurse says quietly, “Wait here in the parking lot until we’ve finished the test.” She then hands the labeled vials to a courier and moves to the next family. You stand with your neighbors, staring into space, scared, wondering if this is the end of the world.
Suddenly a young man comes running out of the hospital screaming. He’s yelling a name waiving a clipboard. What? He yells again. Your son tugs on your jacket and says, “Daddy, he’s calling me.” Before you know it, they have grabbed your boy.“Wait a minute! Hold it!”The young man says, “It’s okay. We want to make sure he doesn’t have the disease. He has got the right blood type.”He leads your son away.
Five tense minutes later, out comes the doctor and nurses, crying and hugging one another. Some are even laughing. An older doctor walks up to you and says, “Thank you , sir. Your son’s blood type is perfect. It’s clean and it’s pure. From it we can make the vaccine.”As the word begins to spread all over that parking lot, people are screaming and praying and laughing and crying.
But then the grey-haired doctor invites you and your wife into his office where your son is lying on a gurney.“We didn’t realize that the donor would be a minor,” the doctor explained. “We need–we need you to sign a consent form.”You begin to sign and then you see that the number of pints of blood to be taken is left blank. “H-h-h-how many pints?”And that is when the old doctor’s smile fades and he says, “We had no idea it would be a small child. We weren’t prepared. We need it all.”“But-but–”“You don’t understand. We are talking about the world here. Please sign. We-we need it all! We need it all!”“But can’t you give him a transfusion?”“if we had clean blood of his type, we would. Now please sign.”In numb silence you do. The doctor takes the clipboard. “I’m sorry, we-we’ve got to get started. People all over the world are dying.” ~Author unknown
If this were your son, could you leave him and turn away as he is crying and asking, “Mom? Dad? Where are you going? Why are you leaving me?
”How would you feel if the next week, when a memorial service is held for your son, some people just sleep right through it, and some didn’t even come because they decided to take the boat out to the lake, and others came and smiled and only pretended to care?
Would you want to jump up and shout, “My son died!! Do you even care?” Would you just want to shake them and tell them how ungrateful they are? Because of the sacrifice and the blood of your son the whole world has been saved! Is it too much to ask that you take an hour or two each week to remember why you still have life?
I wonder if this is how God feels.I believe that in order to really grasp the concept of what He did for us you have to make it personal.
Put yourself in His place. Imagine this being your child in this story and then imagine if Jesus was your son. Think about all those people who didn’t deserve to be saved, yet, they were. When we can think of this great sacrifice in this way does it make you sad? Does it make you want to be a better Christian?
When I heard this story read, I immediately wanted to be better. It helped me understand what God did when He gave His Son to die a cruel death for me.Christians are commanded to remember the Lord’s death on the first day of each week (Act 20:7). I will certainly be mindful of this story as I partake of the Lord’s Supper on Sunday morning.
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TwitterFacebook6GoogleNOVEMBER 23, 2013BY MEGANCHRIST, CHURCH OF CHRIST, DEATH, RELIGION, SACRIFICE
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