Ninety Units

In January 1922, fourteen-year-old Leonard Thompson lay dying in Toronto General Hospital. Type 1 diabetes had wasted his body to sixty-five pounds. His cells were starving — surrounded by glucose they could not absorb, locked out of the very nourishment flowing through his blood. The only medical treatment available was a starvation diet, which merely slowed the dying.

Then Frederick Banting and Charles Best injected Leonard with a purified extract from cattle pancreas — insulin. Within days, his blood sugar dropped. Color returned to his face. He stood. He walked out of that ward and lived another thirteen years.

What strikes me about Leonard's condition is how precisely it mirrors the soul trapped in sin. Everything we need — grace, mercy, the love of God — flows all around us. But without Christ, we cannot absorb it. We starve in the middle of plenty. We are locked out of the very life that surrounds us.

The gospel is our insulin. When the Spirit of God enters a human life, what was always available suddenly becomes accessible. Paul writes, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1). Not freedom from the world, but freedom to finally receive what the Father has been offering all along.

You are not far from grace. You never were. You simply need the One who unlocks what your soul cannot open on its own.