Clemente's Final Flight

On September 30, 1972, Roberto Clemente lined a double off the wall at Three Rivers Stadium — his 3,000th career hit. He was a Pittsburgh Pirates legend, a two-time World Series champion, and one of baseball's greatest right fielders. He had nothing left to prove.

Three months later, on December 23, a massive earthquake leveled Managua, Nicaragua, killing thousands. Clemente threw himself into organizing relief, but when he learned that corrupt officials were intercepting supplies before they reached survivors, he made a decision that would cost him everything. He would go himself.

On New Year's Eve, Clemente boarded an overloaded DC-7 cargo plane in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Minutes after takeoff, it crashed into the Atlantic. He was thirty-eight years old.

Clemente could have stayed home. He could have written a check. He had earned the right to let someone else carry the burden. But he understood something that Scripture makes plain — that love which costs nothing accomplishes nothing.

Jesus told His disciples, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." Clemente did not board that plane seeking death. He boarded it because suffering people mattered more to him than his own safety.

The Almighty does not ask us all to board a plane. But He does ask this: What comfort are you willing to release so that someone else might be rescued?