A strain of flu, never seen before, broke out in India; then Pakistan and France. The effects of the flu were fatal. Teams from The Center for Disease and Control (CDC) flew to those countries looking for answers to this mystery flu, hoping to contain it.

In the meantime, prayer meetings were being held around the world for a cure. In one of those meetings, someone runs in with the news that the virus had spread to Great Britain.

In response, the U.S. president orders the country’s borders  closed to flights coming from and headed to the aforementioned countries. None-the-less, the flu shows up in America’s border states, moving towards the center of America.

Shortly afterwards, the CDC delivers good news. It’s announced that an antidote can be produced from untainted, pure blood.

The CDC then sets up in a hospital in a small town in Middle America and asks for volunteers. Hundreds show up. However, only one is found to have pure blood—a little boy, five years old. Of course, because of his age, the parents’ permission is needed to draw his blood.

Reading the permission papers, the parents asked about the blank line that would list the required number of blood pints to be withdrawn from the donor. The CDC responded that they didn’t expect the volunteer to be so young, and that because of his size, all his blood would be needed. Moreover, a transfusion to replace his blood couldn’t be considered because they had no other untainted blood. If permission were granted to draw his blood, the boy would die.

The parents were distraught, but the CDC urged them to sign the papers because the lives of everyone in the world were at stake. The parents relented, and after assuring their son that they loved him and wouldn’t let anything happen to him that they could prevent, they signed the papers.

A week later, a national memorial was held for the little boy in one of the nation’s largest sports arenas. Reserve tickets were made available. People from all over the world were invited.

Sadly, barely a third of the stadium was filled. And most were there for the spectacle. The television broadcast of the event had ratings that were that of an average day’s newscast.

The reason for such a poor showing, polls showed, was that people had other things to attend to on this presidentially declared holiday.

The little boy’s parents cried, “Why don’t you people care?”

xxx

 I heard this fictional story a few years ago. Of course, what’s not fictional is God sacrificing His Son for the sake of humanity. His disappointment and hurt, like the parents in the story, has Him too crying the same question to the world.