I remember the story of a little boy who was swimming one day in a lake when suddenly he suffered some type of physical difficulty and could swim no farther. The boy struggled for his life. He had gone under twice, when he felt the strong arm of a man lifting him. The man had seen the little boy's desperate plight and had swum out to save him. The man took the boy safely to shore and, after making certain that everything was well, turned to leave. The little boy said, "Thank you, sir, for saving my life." The man replied, "You're welcome, son. See to it that you are worth saving."
Whoever we are, we all had a mother, a father, or someone who took care of us during our most vulnerable time of childhood. It may seem natural for them to do so, but each person’s sacrifice that helped us survive one of the most vulnerable period of our life equates to saving our life. Even the the course of our adult lives may have not gone so smoothly. Though disease or accidents, we may have come so near to death that we felt its chill on our skin but someone, be it kin or stranger, may have been there to save us. Thus we ought to ask ourselves, “Was I worth saving?”; “Is my life a testament to those who took care of me, those who sacrificed in order to keep me going?” Thus to serve, help, and rescue may be our reasonable service in paying it forward. By the way, the boy in the story above has never forgotten those challenging words by a man whom he did not even know. Neither should we forget those who care for us in the most vulnerable seasons of our lives and daily ask ourselves, “Were we worth saving?”
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