She Could Not Go
Mark 10:45 · Galatians 5:13 (NIV)
Back in January, a woman bought five tickets to see Bruno Mars in New Orleans. One for her, and four for her closest friends.
Since then, two of those five have been diagnosed with breast cancer. She is one of them. Because of their treatment, neither of them can go.
So she wrote to David Begnaud at CBS News, anonymously, and asked for help finding somebody who had just beaten cancer, so that person could have the night she could not.
Begnaud contacted FMOL Health, a nonprofit hospital system in Louisiana. They had a name.
Rylie Kuyper is twenty and plays goalkeeper for Louisiana State University. She was diagnosed last spring with stage two Hodgkin lymphoma and documented it publicly on TikTok, so that others going through it would have somebody to watch. LSU reported in early September that she had completed chemotherapy and hoped to return to the field.
A few weeks later her mother told her CBS wanted to interview her about finishing treatment. The interview was the surprise. The tickets were hers, and her friends were going too. Another anonymous donor made them VIPs.
Two things in what she said matter.
The first is how she took it. She felt grateful, and also sad that someone else’s illness had made the gift possible. She knew the loss behind it.
The second is the message she sent back to a woman she has never met.
“I know what you’re about to go through,” she said.
The person receiving the gift understands something of what the giver is facing. Their diagnoses and treatment are different, and neither can know the other’s whole experience. But one has been through treatment that the other is now facing. The gift went toward someone further along, and understanding came back.
Three things this word will not do.
It promises the donor nothing. She is in treatment, and so is her friend, and nobody writing this knows how either will be in six months.
It does not treat completing chemotherapy as a guarantee about the years ahead. A celebration is real without settling a person’s medical future.
And it does not suggest that anybody in this story was sent by GOD to teach anybody else a lesson. Two women got a diagnosis. One of them did something with a night she could no longer use.
Mark tells of JESUS addressing an argument about rank.
Two of HIS closest friends had asked for the best seats when HE came into HIS kingdom. The others were furious. And HE says this.
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Mark 10:45, NIV.
Did not come to be served. HE tells HIS followers to turn away from the kind of authority that lords itself over others. HE then points to HIS own life, given for many. This is more than a kind gesture. It is the saving work of CHRIST.
Paul takes it further, and his sentence opens with freedom.
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
Galatians 5:13, NIV.
Free first. Then serve.
Paul has already said that CHRIST has set them free. He is writing about life in CHRIST, not simply the ability to choose what to do with a possession. That freedom takes shape in love for a neighbour.
People have used the language of service to demand compliance. Paul’s words do not give a person permission to exploit somebody else in GOD’s name.
A woman in cancer treatment decided what to do with a night she had paid for. Nobody required this gift of her. I see something of that movement toward a neighbour in what she chose, without claiming to know her faith or making her gift equal to CHRIST’s sacrifice.
In CHRIST, GOD comes toward us in love.
Mark presents the Son of Man giving HIS life for many. HIS service is not a favour extracted by those demanding the best seats. HE shows them a different way to understand greatness.
GOD asks nobody to be exploited in HIS name. CHRIST’s self-giving love is the ground from which our service grows.
It does leave me thinking about what I am holding onto that I can no longer use myself.
Somebody reading this is at the beginning of the road.
The diagnosis is new, or the loss is, or the thing that will take the next year of your life has only just started. Everybody around you is either further along or has not begun. You are not sure what you have to give right now, and you may have nothing.
That is allowed. Nobody in treatment owes anybody a gesture.
What can be said is that somebody further along may understand parts of what you are facing, and may be willing to walk beside you. They do not need to know it exactly to care.
This does not resolve. Two women are in treatment this morning and one young woman is trying to get back on the field. None of the outcomes are written.
What holds is that CHRIST came to serve and give HIS life for many. Paul’s call to serve grows from the freedom CHRIST gives. Love is a response to that gift, not a payment for it.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the woman who bought five tickets in January, and to her friend, both in treatment this morning, who gave away a night they had been looking forward to for months.
🙏 To Rylie Kuyper, who knew what she was being handed and said so, and who is trying to get back on the field.
🙏 To the one who has just been told, and does not yet know what the next year will look like.
🙏 To the one who was told their service was owed, and has been giving out of fear ever since.
Grace and Peace.
Sources: David Begnaud, CBS News, September 28, 2026; LSU Athletics, Rylie Kuyper’s story, September 3, 2026; Mark 10:35–45, NIV; Galatians 5:1–15, NIV. News reading began with the 1440 Daily Digest. Scripture quotations: New International Version (NIV).