My father spent his life giving himself up for his family. Toiling away at a moderate-paying job, living a modest life, juggling bills -- all for the sake of setting up the lives of his children. And the result of four decades of toil? A bad ticker and two bad kidneys. As he lay in the hospital the other day, we explained to him that he'd have to be in the hospital for at least a week. In a moment of lucidity he sat up in worry and said that he wasn't sure if his insurance covered a long stay like that and he didn't want us to be dealing with the bills.
I've always thought of Christlikeness as a series of choices; one always has the option of giving up oneself for others. It turns out that Christlikeness is actually a permanent condition, a state of being where self-sacrifice is not so much a decision checkpoint, but rather the baseline attitude you bring to the table. One does not measure one's Christlikeness via some formula that considers how many choices one made that day that was others-centric; one merely measures the size of the heart that routinely lays down self as a matter of course.
My father's ticker isn't so bad after all.
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1 comment:
That's the kind of parent/Christian I want to be like. What an inspiration.
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