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Key Bible Verses: We live close to death. … but we give spiritual riches to others (2 Corinthians 6:9, 10). Bonus Reading: 2 Corinthians 6:8–10

At 19, Marc Buoniconti was a starting linebacker on the Citadel football team, with plans to follow in his father's footsteps and become an NFL star. That all changed in an instant when he tackled East Tennessee State's Herman Jacobs, dislocating two vertebrae in his neck and wrenching and twisting millions of nerve fibers in his spinal cord. The robust young player who ran onto the Astroturf that afternoon in 1985 was now a quadriplegic fighting for his life.

Once his life was assured, Marc's family gathered in his hospital room to confer. "As we saw it," Marc recalls, "I had two choices: withdraw, close the door on life, and feel sorry for myself or use my life to help others who'd suffered similar injuries."

Marc chose the latter. He met with Dr. Barth Green, a spinal cord injury expert and founder of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Subsequently, his family formed the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis solely to raise funds for the Miami Project.

Marc, still confined to a wheelchair that he maneuvers by blowing into a tube, says, "When you do something good for someone else, you experience something real."

—Richard Exley in Strength for the Storm

My Response: When have I confronted alternatives like Marc's? How did I choose?

Thought to Apply: No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else. —Charles Dickens (British author)

Adapted from Strength for the Storm (Nelson, 1999) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Dear Father, Your Son came to serve and give His life. Help me to follow His example.

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