An Amazing Gift to Give

Hands holding small giftOne of the ways our church endeavors to serve the community is through participating in blood drives at Faith Community Center. This year we’re partnering with the Red Cross and the Indiana Blood Center to have 4 blood drives (which you can learn about at www.ourcommunitycenter.org).

Why is blood such a great gift?

  1. It’s valuable. Blood that can be donated is rare, and thus valuable. Only 38% of the US population are eligible to give blood, and donors can give only every 56 days.
  2. It’s constantly needed. More than 38,000 blood donations are needed each day. Every 2 seconds someone in the US needs blood.
  3. It saves lives. Donated blood can save the lives of people–people who were made in the image of God. You can help save up to three lives when you give blood because they can separate the whole blood into four types of transfusable products: red cells, platelets, plasma and cryoprecipitate. Typically, two or three of these are produced from a pint of donated whole blood – that’s where the three lives comes from. These products help cancer patients, burn victims, sickle cell patients and newborns as well as people who need massive blood transfusion due to an accident.

Worth the effort

Given the value of blood donations, one could make the case that we should all consider donating even if it were a difficult or time-consuming process. It’s not. The process is simple and has 4 steps: registration, medical history and mini-physical, donation, and refreshments.  (I really like the refreshments piece :).) The actual donation only takes 10-12 minutes, and the whole process usually takes a little over an hour.

A reminder of the best gift

When you give blood, you save lives. I can’t help but think of the most valuable blood shed to save lives–Christ’s blood, which is shed for the remission of sins. There is nothing more precious than that, and in light of what Christ gave, it is easy to give to others.

If you’d like to give this year, please check out the opportunities on www.ourcommunitycenter.org. (The next opportunity is Wednesday, January 19th.)

Dustin Folden
Pastor Dustin Folden and his wife Trisha joined the Pastoral Staff in 2010. They have two children, Sawyer and Mackenna who absolutely love children’s ministries, mostly because of the singing and snacks. Pastor Folden shepherds the 9:30 worship service, oversees the Adult Bible Fellowship ministry, as well as serves in the Biblical Counseling Ministries.