WHAT IS HE WORTH TO YOU? In World War II, the late Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was a B-24 pilot, who flew missions against Axis targets in Germany, Austria, the Balkans, and Italy. On March 14, 1945, he had just dropped his load of bombs over a target and was making his turn toward home base when one of his crewmen informed him that a 500-pound bomb had stuck in the rack. Since it was much too dangerous to try to land with unused bombs, the ordinary procedure was to drop them harmlessly in the sea. However, this time their flight path took them over land. Two of the crew members struggled to get the bomb dislodged, and a sudden upward lurch of the plane told everyone that they had finally been successful. “McGovern watched the bomb descend. … ‘It went down and hit right on a farm in that beautiful, green part of Austria. … It couldn’t have come in more perfectly. If we had been trying to hit it we couldn’t have hit it as square.” Another observing crewman said, “It just blew the farm to smithereens.” McGovern added, “Here was this peaceful area. They thought they were safely out of the war zone. Nothing there … . Just a family eating a noon meal. It made me sick to my stomach.” When McGovern got back to base, he got word that his wife had given birth to their first child. Though elated by the news, the irony of having just given life, and taken it, intensified his feelings. Precisely forty years later, McGovern was lecturing in Austria, when a television station asked to interview him for its documentary on World War II. During the interview, McGovern told the story of the farmhouse destroyed by the bomb jettisoned from his plane. He said, “…The thought went through my mind then and on many, many days since then, that we brought a young baby into the world and probably killed someone else’s baby or children.” When the documentary was televised, the station received a call from a man who said he was the owner of the farm hit by that bomb. He said, “I want you to tell him … I despised Adolf Hitler. We did see the bomber coming. I got my wife and children out of the house and we hid in a ditch and no one was hurt. And because of our attitude about Hitler, I thought at the time that if bombing our farm reduced the length of that war by one hour or one minute, it was well worth it” (Stephen Ambrose, The   Wild   Blue , 229- 233,262,263). This man hated Hitler so much that it was worth the loss of his farm just to be rid of him a little sooner. Yet, if hatred can be so strong, how much stronger must love be? Indeed, love caused Jesus Himself to give His life for sinners. The question, then, for any one of them is, “How much are you willing to lose for Christ?” The answer of so many seems to be, “Very little.” Most seem unwilling to give up even their comforts and conveniences, much less their livelihoods and lives. This is due to a lack of faith in Jesus and ignorance of what allegiance to Him requires. Jesus said, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it” (Luke 9:24). Yes, to save one’s life, he must lose it . Yet, the trade-off is “out of this world.” Jesus does not ask those who come to Him to lose anything ultimately, but just to trust Him in exchanging a home which is illusory and temporary for one which is real and eternal. Nothing ever has been, or ever will be, more “worth it.”

“Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29,30).