Today, we�re going to talk about love in action. No, not the soppy kind that has your mum reaching for the tissues when she�s watching a film. The kind of love I mean is the kind that costs.
This is a true story. A young girl called Lisa was seriously ill in hospital and every day she was becoming more ill. She had a disease that is passed from parent to child. These kind of diseases can affect whole families.
Her wee brother Ryan had had the disease, but somehow he had recovered and that meant that the antibodies needed to fight the disease were in his blood. The doctors asked Ryan if he would allow them to take his blood and give it to Lisa. After only a couple of seconds, he said yes.
So later that day, Lisa and Ryan lay on their hospital beds side by side. Gradually, as the transfusion was taking place, the doctors saw that Lisa was getting better. But Ryan was growing pale.
After a few minutes, Ryan asked � Will I begin to die now?� He had thought when the doctors asked him to give his blood to his sister, they meant ALL of it.
And yet he hadn�t hesitated. Even though he thought it would mean that he would die - he was ready to do it for his sister.
This kind of love takes strength and courage. This kind of love is what Jesus was talking about when he said, �There is no greater love than that a man lay down his life for a friend.�
Today we remember stories of courage and selflessness. Stories of men and women who laid down their lives for love of family, friends, and country in time of war. Their actions belong to the whole world and should not be forgotten.
Love in action doesn�t always demand that we give up our life for someone else. But it is costly. Every day we are asked to show God�s love to others in our actions, not only to the people who are loving towards us and to those who are easy to love, but also to people who are unloving and difficult to love and that has its own cost and its own reward.
