It's complicated: part 2

It's complicated: part 2.  Sacrifice is essential.

Having read It's Complicated: part 1 you are now under the impression that you can do whatever you want to do.  That's right.  You can.

You are 100 percent human with all its glory and creativity and pride and possessiveness and capabilities and small mindedness and.........well, all that and a bag of potato chips as well.  You can do whatever you can get away with.  Folks have been following that rule since the dawn of time.

You can help a stranger or cheat on your spouse.  You can love your children or chain then to their beds.  You can feed the hungry or starve your enemies.  You can bind up the wounded or wound the powerless.  It is all within your power.  You are human, good and evil, loving and petulant, self-serving and selfless. There are days when you are a gift to yourself and others.  There are days when you are most definitely not.There are days when you are better than your best self.  There are days when you are horrified at your own reality.

Just possibly you would like to be your best self more often than not.  Just possibly you would like to live in the flow of life around you, filled with a power of generosity and good will and wisdom and grace.  Just possibly, you know that without some help, you cannot be the force for good that you desire to be. Just possibly, you call that 'force for good' God.

Then sacrifice will be necessary.  Not because God needs it but because you need it.  You need to give away some valued possessions in order to free the channels within in your life for God's creative power to work in and through you.  You will have to sacrifice retribution.  You will have to sacrifice grudges.  You will have to sacrifice believing that you are the center of the universe.

What will it cost to align yourself with the power of love that created you in the beginning and which is so strong it can love you through your worst days?  Nothing (if you are talking about money). Everything (if you are talking about your life).

You will have to give up the notion that you know what is best for you......and the world around you.  You will have to believe that it is truly possible for you, frail, flawed human being that you are, to be the power of life for others.  You will have to believe that you are lovable, deep down below the truth of your failings, you are worth loving.   You have something to give. In the end, you will believe that about everyone else as well.

God has known this all along and wants to walk with you on this wondrous journey towards authentic life.  It was exactly what God created you for in the beginning - that you may have life and have it abundantly.  Even more importantly, you can be a channel of that kind of love to others.  That is the promised land and you can taste it today; let God in Jesus show you the way. Let God in Jesus help you get it done.

It begins in love - not for the God whom we cannot see, but for those we can see - those we can hurt or help, those we can include or exclude, those we can feed, house, clothe or ignore.  Each act of love plants another seed of hope, another moment of grace, until those moments are the most prized possessions we have...

........and nothing else matters.

Love God and you will give it all that you have.

Blessed Holy Week.