During World War II, a young Marine lay badly wounded in a military hospital on a South Pacific island. Shrapnel had ripped through his chest, and unless he received a series of blood transfusions at once the boy was doomed to die. But the type of blood required turned out to be very rare. No donors were immediately available and hope for saving the Marine was fading quickly.


Then a medic discovered a supply of the rare blood in a recent shipment from the United States. The transfusion was given and the marine lived. When he recovered, the grateful young man asked about the donor. She turned out to be a Boston woman, and he wrote to thank her for the gift of her life-saving blood. Then he wrote to his father in Kentucky
and told him about his miraculous experience. His father recognized the donor’s name. She was his long-lost sister and the Marine’s own aunt! The wounded man had never known his aunt, but her donation of rare blood, which matched his, saved his life in the faraway Pacific.

Thousands of lives are saved every year because of blood donations. Every day someone needs blood that comes from donors. Only 3 out of 100 people in the United States have donated blood. The term “blood bank” was created to describe the collection and storage of blood donations to be used for transfusions. Careful guidelines and screening
of blood lowers the risk of infection or incompatibility of different blood types. Blood doesn’t simply go from a donor to a recipient without being carefully tracked, tested, processed, stored, and transported.

Did you know, friends, that there is a unique type of blood that is still saving thousands today? The Bible says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Romans 5:8, 9). The greatest blood donation was made by Jesus Christ when He shed His blood on Calvary to redeem us from sin.

KEY BIBLE TEXTS
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 1 Peter 1:18But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: 1 Peter 1:19