It is not uncommon to see business and homes routinely flying the American flag outside their premises. The trend picks up considerably as Memorial Day weekend approaches. An American flag flying from the flag pole of the home next to the church where I serve is common. However, as Memorial Day weekend was drawing near, I was met by a very uncommon sight. Flapping from the flag pole next door, hanging alongside the U.S. flag, just as proudly as could be was the flag from Germany. Now THAT was a curiosity at best.
When I asked our neighbors about the significance of flying the flag from Germany, they shared with me the final chapter in what was already a remarkable story of hope and healing.
Several months previously their son, a young man in his 20's, had a recurrance of lymphoma. Our congregation and community had grieved with them and prayed for them. Many words of update and encouragement were shared across the church parking lot between them and me as I came and went each day. It was a typical roller-coaster of hope and disappointment, promise and fear, as treatments were attempted without favorable results. At long last, there was no alternative but to attempt a bone marrow transplant. Finding a donor proved to be exceedingly difficult. At long last, a donor was found. The transplant was successful and eventually, their son was able to come home.
The culmination of the story was told under the sound of the two flags whipping in the breeze on a sunny May day. What I had not realized was how exceedingly miraculous finding a donor had truly been. It seems that of all registered donors world-wide there were only two that had a close enough match to even attempt a transplant. The most likely candidate was a 20-something young man from Germany. He had registered some time before when a co-worker needed a transplant, but was not a match. Still, his profile was on file with a global donor registry concern and years later, some stranger whom he had never met, a continent away, would end up needing some of his bone marrow for a transplant.
That weekend, Memorial Day weekend, donor and recipient would meet. They would celebrate, spend time getting to know one another, and from a little bit of shared DNA a friendship that will span an ocean and connect two continents would take root and blossom. I have no doubt it will be a friendship that will last a lifetime. How could it not?
I was blessed to be invited to the picnic to celebrate the meeting and meet the donor. As I stood there and watched the two young men, the joy and laughter of all those gathered, and two flags flapping in the breeze, I could only shake my head and smile at the irony of it. On a day when we were honoring our war dead, we were also gathered to celebrate life. Two young men, strangers with nothing in common, share LIFE. They are blood brothers in the most miraculous sense of the word. Nationality, politcal ideologies, liberal-conservative - all of the labels that we can concoct to put barriers between humans fall away in the face of the connecting of these two young men.
I think that is just a little slice of what God is up to in the world. Teaching us humans to understand that what we have in common is so much richer and more deeply life-giving than any differences we may experience or create.
I am deeply grateful for the reminder that day. Here's to Memorial Day - and blood brothers, and life.
May the Spirit keep us grounded and connected in the one thing we all have in common - God's breath of life!
PK (+)
No comments:
Post a Comment