“I guess that’s just part of loving
people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.”
— LAUREN OLIVER
We know the cost of
sacrifice only at the time we make it. It makes us raw and it stretches us
emotionally. Having given something up that I’d wanted for weeks—an opportunity
for fun, connection and masculine fulfilment—for something of eternal value and
relevance—to spend time with a daughter—time I won’t ever get back—I know the
precipice of choice. And it’s not only myself I disappoint; I feel I’ve let the
team down. But that’s how it is with sacrifice.
Sacrifice, in the truest
sense, is messy and uncomfortable; not to mention often regretful. But the test
of maturity comes because of sacrifice; not because we thought
about sacrificing, but because we actually did something sacrificial.
We don’t (or shouldn’t)
sacrifice for any other reason than it’s God’s will, but so often we sacrifice
for the wrong reasons and this explicates our regret.
But we can’t achieve much
without sacrifice.
Bearing the cost of the
sacrifice is where the point of difference is made; where we go beyond the
threshold of the status quo we are free to blaze a new trail.
To Focus on Cost or Benefit
To all sacrifices is both
cost and benefit.
We cannot have it all
ways. Most of us accept that carte blanche. So we choose. We either take the
opportunity presented, making a beeline for the discomfort-laced reward, or
that thing God wills us to do, or we leave the opportunity even as it is
presented.
We can focus on the cost
of doing what is sacrificial or on the cost of not doing it. Alternatively,
there is the reality of the benefit of either action.
What drives our sacrifice
is nothing if it’s not driven by the will of God.
If we act by ways of God’s
will we make a sacrifice worthy of the cost and replete in its benefit (usually
a spiritual benefit).
***
The will of God we cherish
and honour if we are called as sons and daughters of the Living God. The will
of God in our lives as we discern it often inspires us to act in sacrificial ways.
When we obey the will of God by doing it, we reveal the underpinning value in
our sacrifice by the benefits that most far outweigh the costs.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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