Not Giving Up, But Giving To
"Sacrifice is less about “giving up” and more about “giving to” the Lord." (Bishop L Todd Budge). In his same talk, Bishop Budge points out that the word sacrifice literally means to make holy. When we sacrifice the best that we have to the Lord, it's not that the Lord doesn't want us to have the best stuff, like we don't deserve it or it's bad for our character, but rather we want to give the best that we have to the Lord because we love Him and you give whom you love the best. If we think of sacrificing in terms of giving something up, then we are entirely focused inward and especially on how the absence of the thing we sacrifice makes our life worse. But if we think of sacrificing in terms of giving to, then our focus is outward and we can rejoice in thought of what the Lord is able to do with our sacrifice, and how he's making our own and everyone else's lives better. Furthermore, to sacrifice means to make holy. There is a story near the end of Jesus life, where Mary anoints Jesus' feet with expensive ointment and Judas makes the case that she could have sold it and used the money. But Jesus recognizes Mary's righteous desire to take something valuable and precious, something that she loved, and make it holy by sacrificing and not giving up but giving to her Lord. And the result, as Jesus pointed out, is that wherever His story and gospel were told, this story of her sacrifice would be told also. Everything we have is temporary and besides, most things we end up taking for granted after the novelty wears off and we might not even remember that we had them. But if we sacrifice something, then we give it to the Lord to make it holy, before time and familiarity rob it of its splendor. So we can choose to cling to the things we love and get less and less pleasure out of them as time slowly but surely destroys them, or we can give them to the Lord to make them Holy, to make the best possible use for them, and to immortalize them in our minds and in our hearts and lay up treasures for ourselves in heaven, where neither moths nor rust can corrupt, nor thieves can break in and steal.
