So, I don't normally include pictures in my posts, but this was too good to pass up.
What you're looking at is called controlled cross-circulation, and it is mind-blowing. Before the days of modern heart-lung machines, surgeons who wanted to perform an open-heart surgery needed a way to oxygenate the blood. This was a long time ago, so they hadn't yet invented a machine that could take the patient's blood, filter the waste product out of it, and put fresh, new oxygen into the bloodstream. Their solution?
Open up the father, too.
What? That's right. You heard me. Imagine that your daughter gets sick. Really sick. The doctors tell you that she has a heart condition. Since this is years and years ago, surgery was not as safe, and there was a big chance that your child might not make it out alive. Anxiety doesn't begin to describe what you're experiencing. But wait, there's more.
They've asked to put you under as well.
They say that the only chance at saving your daughter's life is to bring you into the surgery room to function as your kid's heart and lungs. So you say, "Yes."
Because what other answer could you give? This is your baby girl. Of course you would do it, but not because you felt that you "had" to. In fact, you would walk through hell and back for her, if it meant saving her life. So you do.
They get you ready, wheel you into the room, and put you both on two tables feet apart from each other. You say a goodbye that had to carry the weight of the world, because, knowing the risks, you might not get another one. And then they open you both up and twine your arteries and veins together. You've heard it said that only marriage makes two people "one flesh," but this surgery is making you think you're not too far from that concept.
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4)Through Him. What? Is it just me or is that somewhat the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard? God being murdered, so that life may come. All this for a people that cannot love in return, unless He gives them His very heart. Unless his very arteries bleed off the wooden beams of the cross and into the vessels of our broken bodies, we are totally at a loss to love Him, or anyone, back.
He becomes our hearts, our lungs, our breath; our blood. And yes, they put him under, too. Six feet, to be exact. They put him under, so that he could raise us and Himself back from the very dead.
This, I cannot comprehend. This, this is too wonderful for man to understand. What God is this?
Tell me, what God is this?
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