Sam Birmingham needed a kidney to save his life.  However, the 78-year-old husband, father of four, and grandfather to 13, had not been able to find a donor.

Two friends, Steve Hurst and Bob Markham, elders of the New Bern Church of Christ, Birmingham’s home congregation in New Bern, NC, decided to try to find a donor.  They placed an ad in The Christian Chronicle.  Tonya Patton, who was the Chronicle’s advertising manager at the time, assisted them in developing a quarter-page ad in the October 2019 edition.  The edition was mailed to nearly 135,000 national subscribers.

The ad opened with the words: “Sam Birmingham needs a kidney,” adding in parenthesis, “(We only need one to live.)”  Some information about Birmingham was shared including his active participation in the work of the church.  “Sam and Jan have lived sacrificial lives and are truly good, godly Christian people who are in need of your help,” the ad continued.  “The Elders of the New Bern Church of Christ sincerely ask you to volunteer for this worthy effort.”

Approximately 1,000 miles away in Searcy, AR, Melissa McFerrin, 30, read the ad.  She felt compelled to help.  She talked with her husband, Clay, about it.  He supported her desire to go through the process to see if she was a viable donor for Birmingham.  She began undergoing extensive testing in February of 2020.  Then the Covid pandemic hit.  A year later in February, she was determined to help Birmingham, so she resumed the testing.  She was confirmed as a match and she underwent surgery to remove one of her kidneys on September 15, 2021.  Her kidney was flown to North Carolina to be surgically placed in the waiting Birmingham.

McFerrin was happy to share her kidney.  “I’m a fixer by nature,” she said. “So this was a problem with a solution that I could effect, and that feels good. … But I know for a fact — an absolute certainty — that it was very, very little me and very, very much God because we were a match, and the timing worked out.”  She continues to give God the credit for the successful transplant of her kidney to her brother in Christ that she had never met.  “Here I am several states away, and there he is,” she said. “And we’ve got the age difference and his sensitivity with the antibodies.  But it did work.  I happened to read that ad, and I can see God’s hand throughout all of this.” *

Because of our sins, we desperately need a savior, “for the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).  God loves us so much that He sent His one and only Son to die on the cross to pay the price for our sins (John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 5:17).

God didn’t do this for us because we were “good.”  He did this for us because He loves us and we were lost without Him.  We were weak, sinful, and even enemies of God (Romans 5:6-10).

The Good News is that God will save and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7-9).

Jesus came from “a long way off” (heaven) and reached down to the lowliest of sinners with the offer of forgiveness and eternal life.  Won’t YOU accept His offer on His terms?

-- David A. Sargent

* Information gleaned from “‘God’s hand’ in an unlikely kidney donation” by Bobby Ross, Jr., in The Christian Chronicle, www.christianchronicle.org.

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

Archived issues of Living Water can be viewed and accessed from our website at: www.creekwoodcc.org