The Gift Of Life

This past spring my friend and roommate tried to kill himself. It was only through dumb luck and the fast actions of my other roommates that he lived. At the end of one of the most horrific days of my life, my buddy was alive. He had full function and feeling in his hands and fingers and was ok. Needless to say, this was traumatic for my roommates and I. There was a priest who spent a lot of time with all of us through that day and the following days. He stayed with my hurt roommate, he helped me scrub blood out of the rug, and he was a great comfort to us all. He was in our apartment one day, and I asked him how I could ever thank God enough for what He had done. Despite my roommate’s best efforts, he was alive. Only through the grace of God was he alive. Only because my roommate woke up early cause he had to go to the bathroom. God had given my roommate his life back. In that moment I felt no prayer I could ever say, no charity I could ever do, would be enough to thank God for the gift of life he had given my friend. The priest said very plainly, ‘How can we ever thank him for giving any of us life? What He did for your friend He has done for all of us, given us the gift of life, created us. There is nothing any of us can ever do to thank Him enough. All we can do is try our best and hope that it is enough’.

I tell this story because it shows the biggest and most overlooked gift God has given us: life. We’re living on borrowed time. Our mere existence is a present from God, and eventually God will call us back to him when He’s done loaning us out, so to speak. In an undeniably fucked up world, it can be hard sometimes to see God’s presence. The very fact we are alive to look for it, to me, is evidence enough.