In John 15:13, Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."
Such sacrificial love was shown just last month by a 69-year-old great grandmother who risked her own life to save that of a stranger.
Due for a liver transplant, Brenda Jones from Dallas, Texas gave the liver that was supposed to be hers to a 23-year-old woman she didn't even know who also badly needed such a transplant, USA Today reports.
Jones had been waiting for a liver transplant for a year when she finally got the call she had been waiting for on July 18 and was rushed to Baylor University Medical Center.
However, when she arrived, she met a fellow patient, Abigail Flores, a newlywed who had been airlifted to the hospital after her liver completely collapsed. Jones found out that the young woman only had days to live if she didn't get a new liver immediately.
Upon finding out that the liver to be transplanted to her was also a match for Flores, Jones instructed her doctors to give the liver instead to Flores to save her life and to put herself back on the waiting list for liver transplants.
"In my heart, I wouldn't have been able to live with the liver if I had let this little girl die," Jones told NBCDFW. "And I still had more time ... I would have been a very selfish person."
"All I could think about was that I had more time to wait a little longer on a liver and she didn't have any time ... I just knew that's what I had to do ... it was common sense," she added.
God rewarded Jones' kindness and nobility of heart when a few days later, doctors found a matching liver for Jones and they immediately transplanted it on her. Both women are now recovering from their transplant surgeries in hospital rooms just across each another.
Flores was profuse with gratitude to God and the woman who gave her a second chance at life.
"If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be sitting right here right now," Flores told reporters. "It makes me feel good because my husband and I, we just got married and we want to have kids. She gave me the opportunity to be able to do that later on in life."
"I thank God for her each and every day," she added.
