A chord struck

I read this by Caelum et Terra's Maclin Horton yesterday in his Sunday night journal; it struck a chord. Make sure you read it all, but here is a bit (a long bit)

Life itself is almost certain to be intensely painful at some point to everyone. Some amount of suffering will come to all of us, and much to some. But God has given us what may be the greatest gift possible in this life: a meaning for suffering. And not only a meaning, but the choice of making our suffering a positive good by actively offering it on behalf of others. We not only have a purpose for our own lives, but we can choose to make that purpose be the one which is universally acknowledged to be the highest: to give our own lives for the sake of others. And—here’s the best part—we are promised that our efforts will have an effect.

Here’s a little thought experiment: suppose you are standing by an icy river. A gang of thugs comes along and, out of sheer meanness, pushes you in. You are almost stunned by the shock of the cold, and the bank is too steep and slippery for you to climb out. You reach for a branch hanging near the water but you’re too heavy for it and it breaks. You have only minutes to live and will spend them thrashing around wildly in panic, succumbing slowly to hypothermia and/or drowning.

Now suppose you’re standing by that same river, and you see a drowning child. You jump in. You are almost stunned by the shock of the cold, but you reach the child and try to bring him back to the shore. You see that you will never be able to climb the steep and slippery bank, but there is a low-hanging branch which the child is able to grasp, and he pulls himself out of the water. As you are succumbing slowly to hypothermia and/or drowning, you see someone helping the child to safety.

One way or another, sooner or later, we’re all going into that river, and we’re not coming out alive. Would you rather be thrown in, or jump in of your own free will to save somebody else? Which way would you prefer to die?

Oremus pro invicem!