Week 14—Monday Matthew 20:25-28
Week 14—MONDAY
THEY WERE SAVING OTHERS;
THEMSELVES THEY COULD NOT SAVE
We are looking at the cross as it is written into life. Recently I went by large ferry from the island of Honshu to Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. A few years ago during a typhoon there was a lull, and it seemed that it was over. So the ferry started across, but the lull proved to be the treacherous calm of the center of the typhoon, and the ferry was caught in open waters by its full fury. Obviously it was going to sink. A Canadian missionary went around helping people put on the life belts. He found a young man without a belt, and there were no more—the supply had been exhausted. He took off his own belt, put it on the young man saying: “You are young, take my belt, grow up to be a good man and serve Japan.” Fourteen hundred people perished, among them the missionary. Useless sacrifice? No, he had to. He was saving another; himself he could not save. He was a Christian, and he had to fulfill that law. The sequel was this: the young man told this story to a group of college students, then disappeared and was never heard of again, ashamed that a foreigner would die for him. Don’t be too hard on the young man, but remember when you, perhaps, and so many among us, are ashamed to witness that Christ died for us. We merge ourselves into the crowd of anonymity and try to forget that we are persons “for whom Christ died.”
A student sat by the seaside studying for an examination. A lad came down to go into the sea to swim. The student warned him not to, that the currents were treacherous. But the lad paid no attention. Then there was a cry far out at sea. The boy was struggling with the currents. The student ran to the shore, got a plank, and because he was a good swimmer got to him and put him on the plank. The boy fell off and again the student got him on and pushed him toward the shore—saved. But the student’s strength was exhausted, and he sank.
O God, Father, you who have put this impulse to sacrifice oneself for the sake of another into the hearts of the best of us, will this be absent from you? Will the noblest of human rise higher than you? We cannot believe it, we will not believe it, we do not believe it. For you are saying, “O heart I made, a Heart beats here.” We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: In some small way let me step this day between someone and disaster—no matter the cost.