SACRIFICE

You are a 19-year-old kid, critically wounded and dying in the jungles of Viet Nam. It's November 14, 1965. Your unit is outnumbered 8-1, and the enemy from 100 yards away is so intense that your Commanding Officer has ordered the Medevac helicopters to stop coming in. You are lying there, knowing that you're not getting out. Your family is 12,000 miles away, and you know you'ill never see them again. You look up to see a Huey coming in, but there are no Medevac markings on it. Captain Ed Freeman is coming for you even though ordered not to, He's coming anyway. He drops in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load three of you at a time. Then he flies you up and out to the safety of doctors and nurses. Captain Freeman does this 13 more times even after being hit 4 times in the legs and arm. He took 29 out that day. Medal of Honor recipient, Captain Freeman, United State Army, died at the age of 80.

Many men and women, those in the military, law enforcement, fire fighters, and first responders, make sacrifices every day, some of which are hardly recognized. Many have even paid the ultimate price. Someone else who made an ultimate sacrifice was Jesus Christ. He willingly went to the cross and suffered a cruel and vicious death for all creation. Even though He had committed no crime, He took the penalty we deserved and in so doing, offered the promise of total forgiveness to all who accept Him as Lord and Savior. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.

"Those who give much without sacrifice are reckoned as having given little."

Erwin Lutzer, pastor, author.

Mark 10:45, John 3:16-17, Romans 5:8