The Pin That Could Have Been a Person

In Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, Oskar Schindler begins as a man interested in only one thing — profit. He opens a factory in wartime Poland and staffs it with Jewish workers because they are cheap labor. He wears fine suits, drinks expensive wine, and courts Nazi officials with lavish gifts. He is, by every measure, a man living for himself.

But something shifts. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Schindler begins spending his fortune not to build his empire but to save lives. He bribes officials. He falsifies records. He buys workers for his factory — not because he needs them, but because the factory floor is the only place they will survive. By the war's end, he has spent everything he has to rescue over eleven hundred people from the death camps.

In the film's most devastating scene, as the war ends and Schindler must flee, he looks down at the Nazi pin on his lapel and breaks. "This pin," he whispers. "Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it. At least one. One more person."

He finally understood what his possessions were worth — measured not in currency, but in lives.

This is the arithmetic of the cross. God looked at heaven's most precious treasure — His only Son — and measured that treasure against your life. And He gave it willingly. Not for eleven hundred. For all. Every last one of us.

What are we clinging to that He is asking us to release?