Living a sacred life
Trusting in the abundance of God
By N. Graham Standish
The more willing we are to sacrifice in life, the more sacred we make life. The more selfish we become in life, the more scarcity we bring to life. And the less sacred life becomes. Sacredness grows out of sacrifice. Scarcity grows out of selfishness.
Growing up I was enamored with the Civil Rights Movement led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with the Indian Independence Movement led by Mahatma Gandhi. I wasn’t old enough to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement, and would not be born till long after the Indian Independence Movement. Still, they had a powerful influence on me.
What captivated me was people’s willingness to sacrifice themselves for the cause. Today, when we talk about people sacrificing themselves, we think of soldiers serving in the military, sacrificing themselves in times of war or conflict. I truly appreciate their sacrifice, and most of us recognize how sacred their sacrifices are when we say that Normandy, Arlington, and Gettysburg cemeteries are “sacred ground.”
Still, the Civil Rights Movement and Indian independence sacrifices were different. They weren’t violent sacrifices in defense of something. They were non-violent self-sacrifices leading to transformation. People were willing to be unjustly insulted, spat upon, threatened, beaten, arrested, imprisoned, and even killed to transform an oppressive culture.
Their sacrifices created a sacred transformation from Jim Crow laws to Civil Rights, and from colonial oppression to national freedom. Whether it was truly appreciated or not, they were engaging in sacramental acts that overcame division in the way that all sacraments overcome division. Their sacrifices were sacramental, and the results were transformational.
Sadly, sacred sacrifices always compete with selfish scarcity. We live in an abundant world, but so many people choose the way of self-protectiveness, self-reliance, self-centeredness, self-deception, self-delusion, self-pity, self-satisfaction, self-righteousness, and self-promotion that it drains all the love and compassion that comes from self-awareness, self-control, and selflessness.
We are all selfish at times. We can’t help it. Protectiveness is hard-wired into our nature, but that doesn’t mean that we have to live out of this nature.
The Christian life calls on us to continually grow in a willingness to sacrifice time, energy, income, and effort to make life better one thought, one comment, one act, one person, one possibility at a time. It’s when we each individually, and all collectively, engage in small sacrifices that we sanctify the world around us. We overcome the problem of scarcity by leading the world into abundant sacredness.
When we choose to make even the smallest act of sacrifice for another, we engage in sacraments of sacredness.
The Rev. N. Graham Standish, Ph.D., M.S.W. (www.ngrahamstandish.org) is senior pastor of Calvin Presbyterian Church in Zelienople, Pennsylvania (www.calvinchurchzelie.org). He is the author of seven books on spirituality and church transformation, and is an adjunct faculty member of Pittsburgh Theological and Tyndale Seminaries. He also has a background as a spiritual director, and as an individual and family therapist.