The Bible is the best read, and it’s all true

As many of you may suspect, I like to read. Currently I am reading a book about sacrificial parenting. If you don’t mind, I’d like to share it with you.

The book starts out with the birth of this parents’ child. A healthy baby with a very bright future ahead is born. The parent showers this child with love and all the best things that the world can provide. But as you probably suspect, this baby gets sick.

Throughout the illness, the parent does everything it can to cure the child. The parent instills special diets and do’s and don’ts to help this child live a good life. At times the child responds to the treatments, but most of the time the child just declines in health. The parent brings in doctors and nurses to aid in the treatment of the child, but eventually there starts to be organ failure.

The problem is this child is so special that its blood type cannot be matched except in the parent.

So, the parent donates what it can, blood, a couple of redundant organs, but this doesn’t help. It seems the child will need a heart transplant to survive.

Here comes the heartbreaker. The parent must decide. Do it let the child die, or do i give its healthy heart, thus dying in the process. The parent chooses life for the child, and submits to transplant surgery that will end its life. That’s as far as I have gotten.

You see folks, the name of the book is the Bible. But you probably figured that out already. The child is you and me. We are born with an almost incurable disease. That disease being sin. The only cure is the death of our Lord, Jesus Christ. There is no other way to survive this sin.

As I read and reread the Bible, I am amazed at the lengths God has gone to redeem and save His creation. The number of people who, throughout history, proclaimed the Good News, is staggering. The number of prophets and judges that tried to bring the world back to God is nothing short of remarkable. But it wasn’t enough.

The very idea that God would send His only son to save the world, is awesome. But the fact that His son would have to lay down His own life, so we may live, that is almost unbelievable. Yet that is exactly what God did.

The message of Jesus Christ is the message of a parent who loves their child so much that they are willing to die for them. Even when we are at our worst, Christ laid down his life so that all who believe will be saved. That is not something you read in your everyday story.

Might I suggest that you pick up the Bible and start reading it. I would suggest starting in Luke or John, then Acts, and then Genesis, that will give you and idea of what God did. Then read the whole thing and find out why God did it.

Try it, it’s a good read, but best of all it is true.

Shalom my friends.

See you in church.

Rev. Kent Wilfong is the pastor at the United Methodist Church, Doniphan/Neelyville.