This past weekend my brother Steve came to visit from Massachusetts. It was so great to spend time with him. A lot of the time he hung out with Kasey and Karen as I was having my worst days of chemo. But each time I woke up from sleeping, the first thought on my mind was, “Oh yeah, Steve’s here!”
Steve is the one who donated a kidney to me in 2010 and while it was a perfect match and was a perfect transplant, I lost it 6 days later due to a rare clot. It was devastating to all of us but never changed my eternal gratefulness for Steve’s sacrifice. He gave up a body part, forever, for me. Receiving such a gift regularly makes me wonder, “Was I worthy? Am I worthy? Have I lived well enough to deserve it?”
As that last paragraph rolled out of my head and on to the page, it makes me think of Jesus too. He gave everything. First, He gave up His *rights* as the God of the Universe And became a human. What a sacrifice. Then, He allowed men to brutalize Him to the point of crucifixion. Why? Because someone had to pay for the crap we do.
When we examine our lives, we can’t honestly say we live worthy of any kind of goodness. We try to convince ourselves that we are good, but how do we do that? We either point to the good things we do, ignoring the bad, or we find an example of someone who is “worse” than us. So to get a feeling of worthiness, we compare ourselves to murderers and rapists. Who does the rapist compare himself to? A person who is a more frequent one?
The great news is that God didn’t wait for us to be worthy or act worthy. He said, “I
