The Final Flight of Roberto Clemente

On New Year's Eve, 1972, Roberto Clemente boarded an overloaded DC-7 cargo plane in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was not heading to a celebration. A devastating earthquake had struck Managua, Nicaragua, five days earlier, and Clemente — the Pittsburgh Pirates legend who had just recorded his 3,000th career hit that September — had spent the week organizing relief supplies. When he learned that corrupt officials were intercepting earlier shipments before they reached survivors, he decided to go himself. His presence, he believed, would ensure the aid got through.

The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean moments after takeoff. There were no survivors. Clemente was thirty-eight years old.

He had everything a man could want — a World Series MVP trophy, a career that would land him in the Hall of Fame just months later, a family who adored him. Nobody would have faulted him for writing a check and staying home. But Clemente understood something that every follower of Christ is eventually asked to understand: that what you are willing to lose reveals what you truly love.

Jesus told His disciples, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). Most of us will never board that plane. But every day, the Lord asks us to sacrifice something — comfort, pride, time, control — for the sake of someone who is hurting. The question is never whether we have enough to give. The question is whether we love enough to let it go.