In addition to the everyday ministry focuses associated with Kingdom Flight and our Una Esperanza ministries, I've had a lot going on in my family of origin over the last several months. My dad has been in serious need of a kidney transplant for quite some time now and has been on a transplant list with UCLA Medical Center, undergoing dialysis four times a week for many months now. Now, it's all good and fine to be on a waiting list for a cadaveric kidney, but it's another thing to really think about the fact that someone will have to die in order to get that kidney. It has made for some soul-searching while I've been praying that God would provide a kidney so that my Dad will live. At 3:00 AM this past Sunday, my parents got the call that my dad was the match for a kidney that had just come available, so we headed up to UCLA and he had the transplant operation. He came through the surgery and is recovering well, but it really set my brain in motion considering the person who had provided a life-giving organ for my father.
Prior to the surgery, the surgeon gave us as much information as he could about the donor. Honestly, it wasn't a real pretty picture. I won't go into all the details here, but this man didn't have a lot of value that would be measured by worldly standards - no family ties, a questionable drug history, a questionable cause of death. Who knows if anyone will even miss him. Maybe if I had seen him on the street, I wouldn't think too much of him. But now, the fact that he lived makes a world of difference to my dad and to Mr. Keller, who received his other kidney.
One of my sisters, Traci, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in early August, underwent surgery, and is now currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Her prognosis is very good, although the present treatment is not pleasant. Once again, when you're faced with a potential loss of life, you value it a whole lot more. You're willing to do anything, pay any price to keep it, even subjecting yourself to pain and discomfort.
About the time Brad and I started Kingdom Flight, we read a little book that forever changed our outlook on life, the value of life, and the focus of our lives, The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The basic premise of the book is that as followers and representatives of Christ, we are to live our lives with an eternal perspective. If eternity is a timeline that stretches out endlessly in both directions, backwards and forwards, then our entire lives can be summed up in a dot on that timeline. Everything we've ever done or accomplished, everything we have poured into our lives. He makes the point that most people, and even most Christians, give ourselves filling up that dot on the timeline with stuff that has absolutely no value, accumulating things for ourselves, building ourselves up, and then at the end of our lives, we're still just a dot on the timeline. What can truly give our lives value is when we spend our lives, our finances, our time investing in things that have eternal value.
As I read the Bible, I'm more and more convinced that Christ didn't call us to concentrate on ourselves and our needs, but the needs of others. That is one of the strongest convictions we have as a ministry. Every day we have to see the value of the lives placed before us through the eyes of Christ. Each dirty little child is invaluable to Christ, so they must also be so in our eyes. We're constantly asking for the eyes and heart of Christ, to value the ones the world would say have no value. One way to have the mind of Christ is to lay down our lives and our "rights" for the redemption of others. And there is always a cost. I was reminded of that anew with my dad's surgery on Sunday.
Another book I'm currently reading is Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Once again, highly recommended. It's just reminding me of who God is and who I am, and that anything less than giving my very all to Him is an insult. It's all about Him, not me. I was reading Matthew 10 yesterday, and Jesus minces no words in telling his disciples how tough it is to follow him. Why do we think it should be easy in 2008?
I'm in awe of how much God loves us and values us, even paying the highest price to redeem us, instilling great value where there was none merited. I want to live this life, this dot on the timeline, spending myself for things that will last, not what will burn away when my days here are over. I want to value what God values, to have His mindset, to love as He loves.
