Thursday, June 3, 2010

Sacrifice

That word conjures images of ancient Mayan rituals to me.  Or memories of reading through Old Testament temple rules for Bible class in high school.  It's really not a pretty word.  Or a nice word.

Our worship series in church is wrapping up and the last message in the series was, you guessed it, about sacrifice.  As in:  present your bodies as a living sacrifice.  That's such an ambiguous verse to me.  What does that mean? 

Or maybe more honestly, I know what that means to me, and I don't want to do it.

So here is a moment of great spiritual inspiration, I've been living in indifference.  It's true.  It's so easy to bury myself in my mountain of work and pretend like life and its issues don't exist.  But it does.  And they do.  And God has been patiently knocking on my heart.  Church this week was more like pounding and God saying, "Listen up, fool!" in a Mr T kind of voice.

Coming away from communion last night was good.  Sitting in the presence of God for a while and just being quiet.  Remembering O, how He loves us.  Confessing the multitude of ways that I am a sinner.  Paul has nothing on me, really.  But all of that is kinda pointless if it doesn't translate into action and change in me. Indifference is not an ok way to live.

Confession is good for the soul.  Talking to Kells at lunch today really brought that home.  And her sweet offer to pray for me reminded me just how much I wasn't praying.  Time to let go of my rights, my selfishness, and my desire for control. 

God only you know the blackness in me.  And you love me anyway.  Unbelievable.  Move me to sacrifice Lord.  To offer you the little that is me.  To be changed.  To be less.

Response = Sacrifice

2 comments:

Amanda said...

it is uncanny how similar of a place we are in right now. Unreal, actually. I feel less alone in it even more now.

Amanda said...

This also makes me remember a song by Caedmon's Call called "Coming Home" - the first verse goes something like this:

"You say you want a living sacrifice, so I am a burnt offering, crawling off the altar and back into the fire and with my smoke filled lungs, I cry out for freedom, while locking and chaining myself to my rotting desires. And I hate the stench, but I swallow the key and with it stuck in my throat, can you hear me?..."

Those lyrics always resonate with me. I think I crawl off the altar more often than I'd like to think. And when I get burned in the fire, I'm like "What the heck happened?"

Eh....just some thoughts.

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