Worth Dying For

My poor dad, having to convey such heartbreaking news to his little girl. “She got caught in a riptide and couldn’t get back. It pulled her under. She and Wendy were out on rafts when it happened. A man came out and tried to save her, but he drowned too.”

The first funeral I attended was that of my 12-year-old friend. I sat behind Wendy, by chance, and didn’t know what to say. What do you tell a friend who witnessed the tragic death of her best friend before her eyes? But I touched her shoulder so that she turned her head and our eyes met. “I’m so sorry,” I mouthed silently, tears shining and spilling over. (It had to be silent because my throat closes up when I cry—even now—so that I physically can’t get words through.) She nodded and touched my hand, and the moment was over.

My softball career continued, but I never forgot Cherie. And I never forgot about the man who attempted to rescue her. What kind of man risks his own life to save a person he doesn’t even know? He must have thought she was worth saving.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (15:13). Cherie’s would-be rescuer did the same thing for her.

He put his life in danger.

He lost his life.

Through that action, he declared Cherie to be of great worth.

She didn’t earn his love, but he gave it anyway.

This unknown man—unknown to me but surely known to God—illustrated the truth of what I’d recently experienced in my spiritual life. Sometime that year the Lord had become real to me, I had placed my faith in his sacrifice on the cross on my behalf, and I knew like I had never known before that I was safe with him. He had proven his love for me once for all at the Cross. The apostle John, writing much later to the church, recalled Jesus’s command that his followers love one another, and he reminded them: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16).

You may not be drowning in the ocean, but maybe you are drowning in shame, self-doubt, or feelings of worthlessness. Maybe your boss is asking for unethical behaviors, or your boyfriend expects sexual favors. Have you been abused, fired, passed over, rejected? Do you feel invisible?

God sees you (Gen. 16:13).

God hears you (1 John 5:14).

God chose you (Eph. 1:4).

God sacrificed himself for you. Paul tells us in Romans 5:7–8, “One will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

And God has good plans for you. Paul, again, this time to the churches in and around Ephesus: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).

Some English versions of Ephesians 2:10 translate the Greek word “poiema” as handiwork, masterpiece, workmanship. The term refers to something hand-made or fashioned uniquely. But when our family, or employers, or colleagues, or our past beat down our self-image, we forget what God sees when he sees us—his masterpiece. We forget that he sees us, hears us, loves us.

So refocus on God’s word. Remember his truth, not the lies the world throws at us. My life has been touched by the decision of one man who dared to die for a young girl he didn’t even know. My life has been forever changed because Jesus dared to die for me, and for you, knowing full well that we didn’t deserve it but deciding that we were worth the sacrifice anyway.

Let his love define you.