Shedding Blood: Thoughts on Good Friday

Last Friday after I left our midday Good Friday worship service I went to the local blood donation center and gave a pint.  It was just a coincidence of timing.  I am a regular donor, and it was time for my every other month donation.  But as I left the donation center, I couldn't help but think of the words I had spoken the night before at our Maundy Thursday communion service:  "This is my blood," Jesus told his disciples, "shed for you."

Now make no mistake, I don't have some sort of a messiah complex.  I realize it was my blood, not the blood of Christ that I left behind at the blood bank.  But still, in a strange sort of way, it was Christ's blood--after all, the church is called the body of Christ.

Bear with me, here, and let me play this out a bit.  What better way for us to mark the holiest days of the year than by giving of ourselves in such a potentially life-saving fashion?  That pint of A positive blood, may go to someone who is undergoing surgery, or chronically in need of transfusions, or something else altogether.  But whatever, it may indeed help save a life.

I'm not trying to be the hero of my own story here.  All I did was spend twenty minutes or so giving some blood.  I even go a free t-shirt out of it.  (Bright red, by the way.  It has a watermark of the flag, and it says, "All American Donor."  I guess that's what's meant by being a red-blooded American.)
But seriously--this is something I can do every Good Friday if I'm medically able to do so.  And it is something you can do as well. 

Don't know where to go?  Just click on www.redcrossblood.org and find a donation center near you!

In the name of Christ.  In service to unknown strangers.  How much more holy does it get than that!

Happy Easter!