Thursday, December 23, 2010

Last, but not least.

They counted sacrifice a bargain. The last of the ideas that support President Eyring's theory is that master gift givers count sacrifice a bargain. What is a bargain exactly? I don't know. The etymology is pretty mixed. For my purpose I am going to say that it is something that yields more than what you put in. 
Sacrifice seems to be the ultimate inconvenience. No matter what you do it always requires all that you currently have and can seem to break you. The fact is that it is supposed to break you. I always think of a sword in a forge. The metal is folded and folded. Do you think that it is easy to "fold" metal. The only reason that it folds is because it is soooo hot. The fact is that it actually breaks. It gets hot and then is folded and broken so that you can pound it out with a hammer.
Sacrifice requires that we put on hold everything that we wanted to do for someone else. 
Why on earth would we do that?
Because it is what the Savior would do. The things that we give are completely outweighed by what we get. Now that sounds really selfish and if when I say that you think about filling your pockets with the treasures of heaven then it is. The fact is that what we get is almost never measured in physical commodities. What we get is to become more like God. If we were to live life just to get more of what the world has then we will never have enough. 
If we live life to strive to become like God then we will find that there is enough and to spare. The world is always coming out with something new. God is always the same today, yesterday, and forever. The world will have you take care of yourself first so that you can take care of others. Christ would have you lose yourself to find yourself. 
The fact is that anything that we "lose" is much like being in a sinking boat and mourning all of the things tossed overboard to save your life from being lost to the storm and wishing with all of your heart that you had kept them and died. The fact is that anything we lose really makes the trip that much easier and the matter of fact is that we were going to lose it anyway, or it will be restored an hundred fold. I call that a bargain. What are you giving and what are you getting. Do we give gratefully so that we can rejoice in BOTH the gift and the Giver of the gift. What we deem as sacrifice is really lightening the load and in so doing becoming more like Him whom we serve.

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