A good part of me is struggling with the word “sacrifice.” Just a quick look at the thesaurus and there’s no wonder I’m hedging, words like lose, endure, renounce, forfeit, and part with. They all resound loss. In our currently turbulent world, can I afford to lose anything more? Can I afford not to?
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. [Romans 12:1-2]
It feels like an oxymoron [self-contradictory]. How can I be a “living” sacrifice; won’t I be gone and spent? It’s the most blatant paradox in all of scripture and it’s repeated over and over again: to live is to die; to die is to live. [What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. I Corinthians 15:36]. We see it in nature all the time: the earth replenishing itself.
Too often, I can only see this life, this skin, this body. I try not to be afraid to die. I understand the promises of life after death, I espouse alternate realities and a rich spirit life in which the Presence of Christ is much bigger than this three-dimensional me. But I hold still fast to what I have. Perhaps it is rooted in our family’s poverty when I was young, but how long can I allow that wanting self to rule my life of plenty?
Many years ago, I read Hannah Hurnard’s “Hind’s Feet on High Places,” the allegorical story of Much Afraid whose Chief Shepherd encouraged to take a journey up the mountain with two companions, Sorrow and Suffering. She did not like these companions at first, at all. They seem to be taking her the wrong way, down and not up. But she is convinced to trust the Shepherd, and so she goes, marking that decision with an altar (a benchmark).
And so I am reminded that a living sacrifice is not a one-time, lay it down kind of thing. It’s a another journey. A living sacrifice is ongoing, daily, with understanding, becoming and transforming, letting go of one part, growing another. It is a renewal through pruning. It is communal and by agreement. I must choose.
Meditations from Zion 
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