Death for life, Pt. 1

A woman contracted the disease, called Leukemia. After a couple of bouts with it her kidneys were damaged permanently. Her driven nature, her strong mind and memory, her natural selfish and unforgiving propensity were the cause of the disease that reeked havoc on her body, together with her unbelief in God’s revealed health message which resulted in her accepting chemotherapy.

So she ended up on kidney dialysis. During hospital stays she received visitation by church members and eventually one of her visitors agreed to drive her to her dialysis appointments three times a week. Each trip there and home again provided opportunity to converse.

A friendship deepened, a kinship developed, and they prayed together constantly to God for healing or for a kidney transplant. For days and weeks their prayers ascended in faith and hope. And the young woman began to sense a change happening in her somewhat resistant nature. Her sometime caustic moods softened and she allowed the Holy Spirit to do His work in her heart.

Her recked body remained, but a kinder, patient side that she was striving for began to spread abroad in her heart and to choke out the inherited, inbred selfishness. Her talk was more of Jesus and of the Bible, and her life mirrored more of her Friend in the heavens. Her prayers grew less about her kidneys and more about His character imparted to her. “Strength and honour [were] her clothing…. She opene[d] her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue [was] the law of kindness.” (Prov. 31:25, 26).

Then one day as her driver friend returned from a weekend trip to West Virginia, an oncoming car drifted into his lane, and to dodge a head-on collision, he had to veer off into the front yard of a house along the highway. His car lost control and he ran into a telephone pole.

He suffered a brain concussion and a broken neck, and lay in a coma for three weeks. When he returned to consciousness he was paralyzed from the neck down. His doctors told him that, based on history, he would never walk again.

As he lay in bed day after day, the idea was born and grew bigger and brighter, that he had no use for both of his good kidneys and that he should donate one to his Leukemia-damaged friend. The tests showed that her body would accept his kidney, and preparations were made to perform the surgery.

Over the months of his coma and post-coma home care, his friend’s health gradually deteriorated as her body was not able to process food, and her weight dropped into the 80s and 70s. Now her heart and thin frame could not support unassisted mobilization, and her situation was desperate. She had suffered long and so had her faith. But, as much consciousness as she could muster, so much faith in Christ supplied her thoughts and words.

Now her delicate body must have a kidney before the potential for cardiac arrest would prevent the kidney transplant. The transplant was a miraculous success. Her body repaired, her strength renewed, her faith was confirmed. She saw fulfilled the scripture,

“Then the Lord is gracious unto [her], and saith, Deliver [her] from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.

[Her] flesh shall be fresher than a child’s: [she] shall return to the days of [her] youth:

[She] shall pray unto God, and He will be favourable unto [her]: and [she] shall see His face with joy: for He will render unto man His righteousness.

He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not;

He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.” (Job 33:24-28).

But that is not all. Daily, as she returns to life, and as she visits her benefactor often in his home, paralyzed but contented in her restoration, she increasingly comprehends the great sacrifice he made for her. She also realizes that his car wreck was God’s providential answer to their prayer.

Her friend must lose his life for her to gain hers. He must willingly submit to the all-wise, divine solution which is to reveal justice and mercy. There can be no mercy in His universe without justice being meted out—no true grace without pain and suffering, no salvation from sin without a substitutionary sacrifice.

                                                               

Now she suffers with her donor. Grief and shock daily overcome her. She wishes that the obligation due him could be resolved and that her disease wracked body could return. But her flush of health is permanent now. There is no going back. She must live a life imprisoned to the heavy responsibility to her deliverer. There is no shaking the new reality, and more and more fully her pride and self-centeredness suffer in the intensely suffocating environment of grace.

Daily she learns of salvation. Daily she is crucified with Christ, and never can be released from Him. Daily she become like Him.