A Body Given Up For You

Two weeks ago my nephew lost a leg and a foot in Afghanistan.  He had wanted to serve people in a more substantial way than as a manager of a bar which had been his prior occupation. So he joined the Rangers and became a medic.  He learned to apply tourniquets, and to perform emergency tracheotomies, inject intravenous fluids to keep soldiers alive and get them off the battlefield and into a medical facility. To do this work he had to put himself in harms way. He  played a kind of "catcher in the rye".

This got me thinking.  We had just read over the last couple of months the gospel of Luke. Twice in that gospel Jesus says that those who seek to save their lives will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  And so I asked myself, “what does it mean to lose one’s life for His sake?”   In any case, we only have our bodies temporarily and parts of our bodies might be even more temporary.  But what does it mean, to lose one’s body for Him?  Did Chris, my nephew, loose his leg and foot for Him?   He put himself in harms way to provide an essential service to those in his unit who might become casualties of war.  He didn't want to become one himself.  

“This is my body which will be given up for you and for all that sins might be forgiven,” He said, before becoming a casualty of that spiritual war in which we are all combatants.  Love, that much over worked word,  love is about giving up one’s body,  not primarily in sex acts, but in the day to day service offered to those we care about.