OT: post-transplant message (religious content)

[Guest guest]

Friends:

I don't post much anymore but thought I would share a message I wrote

which was printed on the back cover of church bulletins used in North

American congregations throughout my denomination (Community of

Christ) last Sunday.

Rich in KC

Crohn's, cryptogenic cirrhosis, liver txs 5/2001

Act in Love

This month marks five years since I received two liver transplants.

Since then my wife and I celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding

anniversary. Our son graduated from university and our daughter from

high school (she is now in her third year of college). And I accepted

a calling as pastor of my congregation [serving on an unpaid basis].

Yet I still don't know anything about either organ donor: names,

hometowns, or circumstances of their deaths--or lives. Was it a stroke

or a car accident? What has happened to their families? Somebody does

know, of course, but it's not me. I'm not even certain I need or want

to know the details.

What does matter is that I'm alive and healthy because someone,

somehow, somewhere offered an anonymous gift of life. Why? Was it just

the decent thing to do? Was " love " involved? That word is used to

cover so many situations. Here, somebody died and, in turn, somebody

else got a chance to go on living. What a remarkable thing! Sure, the

medical science is amazing, but there's something more to this.

I keep telling myself that my donors did not die so that I could live.

That's what God did in Jesus Christ. But out of tragedy they and their

families decided that life--and love--would triumph. It is, for me,

evidence that we are all spiritual beings inhabiting physical bodies

and not the other way around. The witness of scripture writers is that

we are made in God's image. tells us that God is love (see I

3:16-24). From that I must conclude that God's will is for us to keep

finding new ways to pass on that love. In doing so we will know that

God abides in us and in the world we inhabit.

A. Brown

Blue Springs, Missouri

[Guest guest]

Rich,

This is such a moving piece – thank you

so much for writing this and sharing it with us.

God IS good.

LINDA

(Mom of Suzanne,

17; IBD 1/04; PSC 3/04)

Rich in KC

Crohn's, cryptogenic cirrhosis, liver txs 5/2001

Act in Love

[Guest guest]

Rich,

This is such a moving piece – thank you

so much for writing this and sharing it with us.

God IS good.

LINDA

(Mom of Suzanne,

17; IBD 1/04; PSC 3/04)

Rich in KC

Crohn's, cryptogenic cirrhosis, liver txs 5/2001

Act in Love