Seven Sacrifices to Joy

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Hello and happy day to you! Thanks for joining me for our Coffee Hour and more of this series The Seven Sacrifices to Joy as I write from my heart to yours the road to joy. I had no idea it would have so many twists, turns and tumultuous obstacles to get to and through! Grab your coffee and your Strand of Faith and let’s go to the seventh sacrifice…. Finally!

The seventh sacrifice is our body.  Now, I’m not speaking about becoming like the animals that were put upon the altar as a sacrifice in the Old Testament… ugh, that’s a bit gory. No, I’m talking about something completely different, a different sacrifice that we can offer because of the gift of grace. Let’s take a look at Romans 12:1 and begin to see why/how our bodies are deemed to be a sacrifice.

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your spiritual worship." (Romans 12.1: Harper Collins Study Bible.)

So we see that our bodies are deemed a “living sacrifice,” and that doesn’t mean the walking dead! Then what in the world… how in the world… first of all, “bodies” in this context refers to total self, aka, mind, body and soul/heart! Whew, but there’s probably a seven-course meal in that one verse… but don’t panic; we won’t park here for too long, just what is necessary to really grasp what this sacrifice is all about.

The word “bodies” translates in the Greek to “soma” and means “the body as a whole, the instrument of life.”  So this confirms the principle of mind, body and soul. But how many of us get up in the morning physically and emotionally, perhaps even with an emotional hangover, and begin our day without our spiritual selves? When and if we do that, we would perpetuate that emotional hangover because we are functioning out of balance!

Oh, how I remember the days of my feet hitting the floor and running through my to-do list like a marathon runner desperately yearning to cross the finish line! See, going through the day like that is like riding the oceans of life in a boat without a captain, or attending and learning the lessons in the classroom of life without a teacher, or traveling the globe in a plane without a captain: DANGEROUS!

What would our lives look like if we put our whole self in and incorporated the spiritual component into our days, our agendas, our families … instead of playing Hokey Pokey and turning ourselves around in the same circle, over and over and over again?

So could it be that one way our bodies are a sacrifice is when we live with all three components, mind, body and soul/spirit so as to avoid crashing when the waves of life hit us?

Join me tomorrow for more on this sacrifice!

Evinda