The Price of a Pin

In the final scene of Schindler's List, Oskar Schindler stands before the eleven hundred Jewish men, women, and children he has saved from the gas chambers. He has spent his entire fortune — every last Reichsmark — bribing Nazi officials and buying workers for his factory, not to build munitions, but to keep human beings alive. He should feel triumphant. Instead, he breaks down.

He holds up his gold Nazi party pin and weeps. "This pin — two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it. At least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this." He looks at his car. "Ten people right there. Ten people." The man who sacrificed everything is undone not by what he gave, but by the thought of what he kept.

That scene haunts me because it reveals something about the nature of true sacrifice. When sacrifice is real — when it costs you something that matters — you never walk away thinking you gave too much. You walk away wondering if you gave enough.

The Apostle Paul understood this. He counted everything he once treasured as loss for the sake of knowing Christ. Not grudgingly, not with a ledger, but with the heart of someone who had glimpsed something so valuable that every former treasure looked like rubbish beside it.

This Sunday, the question is not whether we are willing to sacrifice. It is whether we have seen something worth sacrificing for. Because when we truly see the love of the Almighty, the only regret is that we held anything back.