The Heart That Beat Twice

In 2018, a nineteen-year-old college student named Jordan Rice received a new heart after three years on the transplant waiting list at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The donor was a seventeen-year-old who died in a car accident on a Georgia backroad. When Jordan woke from surgery, the donor's mother had left a handwritten note on the bedside table: "Please take care of my son's heart."

Jordan said those seven words changed everything. He quit drinking on weekends. He started walking three miles every morning along the Chattahoochee River. He told a reporter from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he sometimes pressed his hand to his chest and whispered, "I won't waste this." Not because someone was watching — but because he carried within him a gift that cost someone else everything.

Paul's words to the Corinthian church carry that same staggering weight: "You are not your own; you were bought at a price." The price was not a surgeon's bill. It was a cross on a Jerusalem hillside. The Spirit of the living God has taken up residence in your body — not as a guest, but as the rightful owner. Every choice you make with your hands, your eyes, your appetites either honors or dishonors the One who paid for the heart now beating in your chest.

So press your hand to your chest today and whisper it back to Him: "I won't waste this."