I Could Have Got More

In the closing scene of Schindler's List, Oskar Schindler stands before the eleven hundred Jewish workers he saved from the Nazi death camps. He spent his entire fortune — every mark, every favor, every ounce of influence — buying their lives by employing them in his factory. But as the war ends and he prepares to flee, he does not celebrate. He breaks down.

He pulls a gold pin from his lapel. "This pin — two people. This is gold. Two more people." He looks at his car. "Ten people right there." He collapses, weeping. "I could have got more."

Here was a man who sacrificed everything — and still measured every remaining possession not by its market value but by its redemptive value: how many lives it could purchase.

This is the scandalous mathematics of love. And it points us to One who did not stop at a pin or a car but gave everything — His very life. "Greater love has no one than this," Jesus said, "to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). What Schindler glimpsed through tears, Christ fulfilled on the cross. He held nothing back.

The question for us is not whether the price was paid — it was. The question is whether we will live as people who understand what that sacrifice cost.