Lots of people encouraged me before this morning saying, 'You'll be fine,' and I was. No, that sounds wrong. I mean that I said what I wanted to say without stumbling or forgetting or making too many mistakes.
I'm going to try and get the tape but, in the meantime, Ian asked what conclusions we'd reached, so I thought I'd precis my talky bit. Although if I precis it too much it'll be non-existent!
I started off by saying that, no, I wouldn't kill my child. I continued by saying that if I were 100% convinced that God was telling me to, and that others agreed, then we'd be a cult and be arrested. And quite rightly. God doesn't want human sacrifices; Jesus was the human sacrifice to end all sacrifice. In dying he did it all for us.
Then I considered what God had asked me to sacrifice in my life. I couldn't think of anything. Either God hasn't asked me or I didn't hear him. Or I pretended not to hear.
I went on then to look at what others have sacrificed and that varied from their lives to good jobs to their record collections. And these are the last three paragraphs of my talky bit:
"Sacrifices come in all shapes and forms; it’s not one size fits all. The sacrifice God asks of you might be to give up a good job to work with addicts or in a slum. Or now might not be the right time for that particular sacrifice. Now maybe all he wants of you is to give some time to a friend who’s lonely. Maybe that’s the biggest sacrifice he’ll ever ask of you. Sacrifices don’t have to be huge.
"In Psalm 51 David wrote, 'You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.'
"I guess God had no intention of allowing Abraham to kill Isaac; he just wanted to see how great Abraham’s trust was. And I think what God wants from us most of all is a willingness to trust him, an openness to hear him, and a generosity of spirit.
"I wonder if rather than view sacrifice as a giving up, a hardship, we should perhaps think of it as a giving up to God of our time, our energy, our money, our passion, our compassion. He was willing to sacrifice everything for us; what are we willing to give to him in return?"
xx
3 comments:
That's become my way of thinking for Lent - sacrifice as a giving up to God of time, talent, etc., rather than "giving up chocolate." I think you've hit on something there, and I hope your audience was receptive.
Glad all went well, Liz.
That is lovely, Liz.
Thanks for posting this, Liz, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond sooner. That's an interesting take on the notion of sacrifice.
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