sacrifice – Anna Down South

I used to give up things for lent as a child, we didn’t make a big deal of it, but I remember doing it. This year I decided to give up gluttony, which looks like giving up late night snacks, eating less overall, and eating better overall. I decided I wanted to partake because I realize that I’m bad at giving things up.

We don’t talk about sacrifice enough when we talk about getting our goals. We streamline the discussion by talking about hard work, like those two things are completely interchangeable, but they aren’t. Sacrifice is hard work, but working hard doesn’t mean that you’re truly sacrificing, especially if it is hard work you enjoy.

The point of sacrifice is that you’re giving up something you don’t want to. The point of sacrifice is to suffer now in order to succeed later on. In terms of your life it means later on in the years, in terms of your soul it means later on in the next life. But either way you have to give things up to get anywhere.

The path you are on has lead you to where you are now, but you might not get any farther if you don’t change yourself. You might be stuck here or stuck inching along at a snails pace forever. You don’t want that, but you might deserve that with how you’re currently living.

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It’s hard not to think about sacrifice on Easter. God sacrificing his only son, Jesus sacrificing himself, all so that we may be forgiven of our sins. It’s the biggest sacrifice of all, for the innocent to die willingly for the guilty.

I was reflecting on the topic Saturday, but it started differently, without all the praise, but instead with a firm realization that I wasn’t very good at sacrifice.

I have a lot of good traits, I’ve done a lot of good things, but I like to tack on good deeds, I like when I can add them on without getting rid of other things I enjoy. The people on the receiving end never seem to mind. I still feel good about doing the good deeds. It seems like a win win, but it isn’t. You can’t only go out of your way to do the right thing or the kind thing when it’s convenient.

We all have a few people in our life that we’ll go the extra mile for, but it tends not to be a large group. This is one of the oldest problems. We think people have to earn that level of sacrifice. We’re stingy with it. I’m especially so when it gets in the way of things I enjoy, so much so that I don’t like sacrificing things for myself. I was praying about my health because I am still fighting the end of lyme disease and God helped me pray myself into a corner. I’ve been running low on effort, I’m tired of being sick, I don’t want to go the extra mile even though it would only be benifiting myself.

Now that gets you thinking. I won’t even make the long term sacrifices for my own benefit so I’m pretty positive that I’m not making enough sacrifices for others.

The goal with this life is to live as close to your ideal as possible. For Christians that ideal is Christ. We’ll never reach his level of sacrifice, but we could all stand to make more, for ourselves, for others, for humanity. It’s a tall order, and as much as we’d like to pretend we don’t understand how mankind put our savior on the cross, I think we all do. We would rather kill our ideals than try and join them. It’s less work. It’s easier.

But as it was then, it’s the wrong way. So stop listening to yourself when you’re trying to convince yourself that nobody’s perfect and it doesn’t matter if you sin one more time, sacrifice one less thing, enjoy more luxury then you should. Stop killing the ideals you would like to reach.

I’ll be here trying to do the same, failing at it, then trying again, hoping to get a few wins in between loses.