Kaitlin just lost her long battle for life. She was born with a defective valve in her heart, and that weakness in her heart pursued her through her all-too-short life. Although she had multiple surgeries and times of physical limitation, she had a really positive spirit and often a pretty normal life. Then, after seventeen years, that heart just gave out. They said her only hope was a heart transplant before that, and she eventually got one, but it just didn't work out for her. In her last weeks, she sometimes battled just to breathe, but she never stopped fighting. And in Kaitlin's dying, her aunt-a relatively young woman herself-learned a powerful lesson about life.
Kaitlin's aunt, in the past, has reached the end of her rope and more than once tried to commit suicide. When Kaitlin graduated from life on earth to life in heaven, her aunt went to Kaitlin's mother and said, "I'm so sorry for the times I tried to kill myself. After seeing how Kaitlin fought so hard to stay alive, how could I just throw my life away?"
When you see someone fighting for just a little more life, you realize how priceless life really is. When you see how much Jesus paid with His life to save ours, you see how priceless life really is. And you begin to understand the stark challenge God lays down to us in Deuteronomy 30:19. It's our word for today from the Word of God. The Lord says, "I have set before you life and death...so choose life that you may live, and your descendants."
Life is always the right choice. Only God has the right to choose anything else. Life's the right choice when you're considering throwing yours away. Life is the right choice when you're considering throwing away the life of an unborn baby. We just can't decide to end a life that God has created; that only the Creator of life can choose to end.
David's prayer in Psalm 139 is so revealing. He says to God,
"You formed my inward parts; You wove me together in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made...Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were written all the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them."
A baby is the unique, handmade creation of God, "fearfully and wonderfully made" the Bible says. The circumstances of conception have nothing to do with the value of the life God made. And we have no right to take into our hands the decision as to when our life ends or when any other life ends. God has ordained the number of our days before we even lived our first day. Who are we to interfere with that sovereign choice?
A life-no matter how new, no matter how old, no matter how difficult-is a treasure from God that none of us has the right to throw away. To do so is open defiance of the One who created us and every other life. It may be that it's been a struggle for you to choose life, and many people at that wall that they've hit at the end of their rope, have finally found the Savior who said
"I have come that you may have life and have it to the full."
He said of the devil
The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I come to give you life."
Today you can experience that eternal life that-that life with meaning that He died to give you if you'll let Him forgive your sin. You know, He died to do that.
If you are reading this and have never asked Christ to forgive you and to Save you, may you come to HIM today and discover the LIFE that HE DIED on the Cross to give to you, so that you may have it abundantly and forever.
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