One of my life’s great regrets is having leukemia and no longer being eligible to be an organ donor. As long as I can remember my driver’s license has indicated I want to be harvested of anything that would help another person. Even yet my Massachusetts license has a tiny red heart in the lower right hand corner. However, it is a leftover from pre-leukemia days. There are presently over 120,000 people on various organ waiting lists. One person has the optimal opportunity to help over 50 people by giving everything from kidneys to eyes. Now I can help no one. I am saddened. One of my very good friends gives platelets once a month. He has been doing that for years. I wonder how many lives he has saved. I can no longer do even that.
One of life’s great tests is not how much we have acquired but how much we have given. When my son worked in downtown Manhattan and rode the subways each day there were many homeless people he regularly helped. We are not here to aggrandize ourselves but to work hard that we might have more to give.
In Matthew 25 Jesus said to the redeemed, “‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Those are good words.
Written by Roger Bothwell on March 25, 2015
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
rogerbothwell.org