Parable of Grace

It's a sunny autumn day. The light of the morning sun is shining through the windows of an intensive care unit into patient rooms filled with IV stands and ventilators and heart monitors.

In one room, the light reveals the jaundiced face of a 45-year-old teacher dying of liver failure. Next door, an ashen-faced 62-year-old grandfather needs a new heart. Three doors down, the light falls on the face of a 27-year-old mother who gasps for breath with ruined lungs.

None of them has walked in the light for weeks. They are doing all they can just to live another day. They are waiting for a gift. It is a priceless gift. It is priceless because of what it will give them – new life and health and time with their families – and also because of what it costs – the life of someone else. How do you pray for a new heart when you know that it comes from someone else's death?

In another hospital, a family grieves. Someone they love has died and the autumn sunlight is swallowed in darkness.

Someone tells them of the possibility of donating their loved one's organs. They say it would be just like their loved one to want to help someone else. They talk about sparing some other family the pain that they are experiencing. So they choose to give the priceless gift to nameless strangers.

A 45-year-old teacher receives a liver, a 62-year-old grandfather receives a heart, and a 27-year-old mother receives new lungs. They all pray for a grieving family they may never know.

As a hospital chaplain, I have been with all of these people more times than I can count. It is a miracle for those who were dying, and also a miracle for those who give. What a profound and wonderful miracle. What a parable of grace.

— Chaplain Joel De Fehr