I will give you a new heart
and put a new spirit in you.
—Ezekiel 36:26
On February 25, 2017, 33-year-old Mike Cohen woke up at Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center in San Diego with a new heart beating in his chest.
The donor was 32-year-old Navy flight surgeon James Mazzuchelli, the victim of a helicopter crash.
Mike and James’s mother, Christine Cheers, became email pals, and Mike mapped a 1,426-mile bike ride to James’s grave in Jacksonville, Florida. The Cheers family would meet him there.
On November 20, 2019, Mike pedaled into the cemetery and took Christine into his arms. Then he positioned the chest-piece of a stethoscope over his heart and handed the earpieces to Christine, and there it was—lub-DUB, lub-DUB, lub-DUB. Her son’s heart was very much alive.
At age 33, Jesus died and gave you a new heart: “It is no longer [you] who live, but Christ who lives in [you]” (Gal 2:20).
There is no waitlist for a
spiritual heart transplant.