Sacrifices for Love

I just finished up the three book series of Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I admit, I didn't rush right out to see the movie when it came out, but am now eagerly awaiting the release on Blu-Ray.  I highly recommend the book series, and if you like that one, then also read Suzanne's Gregor the Overlander series.  She creates such believable unlikely heroes that compel you root for their successes.

This is not a story about successes, though.  This is a story about sacrificial love.  Katness Everdeen is a young girl put into the role of caretaker of her young sister, Prim and her fragile mother.  She hunts for them, provides food for them, and is the overall protecter, since her father died in a mining accident.  She lives in a world of post apocalypse, a world of ruthless oppression by a dictatorship.

Part of the dictatorship requires 24 child gladiators, two from each region, to participate in fights to the death of all but one.  Gladiators are selected by lottery.  It is a sentence of death for those selected.

Prim was selected.  Katniss is horrified and rushed to volunteer to go in her place.  This is sure death for Katniss.  This death will be full of pain, humiliation, and agony.  It would not be quick.

In the Bible, Christ understood what he had to do to pay the penalty for our sins.  He did not want to die in that manner, but he understood that was the only way to save us.  He had to take our place.  He had to die in a manner of beatings, pain, humiliation and agony.  Only in this way are we free from our own burdens of sin.  Christ would only do that in his great love for us.

I know many people would say they would die for another.  However, I wonder if the death included days of beatings, pain, humiliation and agony, would we be so eager?  I can hardly stand to watch or read about the kinds of torture that takes place in our world today.  Would I be able to endure that to save the ones I love?

Would you?

He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word.  Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheered, he took it all in silence.  Justice miscarried, and he was led off -- and did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people.  They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man, even though he'd never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn't true.  (Isaiah 53:7-9 MSG)