A PRAYER TO START
If, as Paul says, our normal comings and goings as Dallasites in October of 2018 can indeed be a living offering to our Father in heaven, then I dare say that we tread daily on holy soil. I don’t know about you, but my tattered shoes and creaky floors rarely appear to my eyes as a transfigured temple. Perhaps that is why we have been taught to pray over the years for eyes to see and wisdom to act in accordance with the true reality that we find ourselves walking each day. Pray with your faith family today…
Father, I confess that I have trouble at times seeing the day before, with its possibilities soon to arise and opportunities sure to surface and interactions destined to ensue, as holy, set apart, ground on which I can worship you. Oh Father, give me eyes to see what you have graced me with and wisdom to respond with grace in kind. Let me today, and each day I call today, be aware of where I tread, and live accordingly. Because of Jesus I can walk today in your presence. Amen.
GETTING THOUGHTFUL
Optimism, not fear of disaster, leads us to stay resolute in our convictions and persevere in our endeavors. When we assess the environment in which you and I are attempting to cultivate a good world together, it is certainly easy to despair and recoil. And yet, this same divided world in which we live is actually the world in which God has chosen to extend his magnificent mercy; to not destroy the evil that divides fully in this moment of division—for that would be to destroy you and I—but rather, to heal it through the broken body and shed blood of his Son. And so we sing like Paul, “How wonderful is our God, how genius and generous is he!” (11:33-36); and, like Paul, we submit our lives to the grace that heals us and makes us fit for the task, as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (12:1)
Pastor and scholar, Thomas Schreiner (646) notes, “Paul views human beings holistically, and thus there is an intimate connection between what one thinks and what one does.” Worship for our faith linage was not merely a cognitive acknowledgement nor purely an emotional response to God; but rather a demonstrable action, an entire way of life that includes ones entire life in awareness and response to God.
What other rational response is there towards the One who has and continues still to create and sustain life, who has and continues still to patiently and persistently move history away from destruction towards restoration, who offered himself to suffer in order that we might be healed, and who precisely forms us to marvelously function so that we all might flourish? (Which is the story and argument chronicled in Romans 1-11) Would mere recognition of such a person and such a power be enough to count as excessive admiration, or would even adulation in weekly scheduled or passing moments do him extravagant honor? No! But a life lived in “pure grace”, willingly submitted in humble obedience to his ways would qualify as exuberant love.
Set apart – not divided internally or externally, complete, unimpaired as part of a whole; acceptable – conformed to a pattern of reconciliation, restoration, recreation, love and mercy and sacrifice. That is what a “holy and acceptable”, “living sacrifice” looks like. In The Message’s paraphrasing of Romans 12:1, Paul says, “Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life – and place it before God as an offering.” It is the ordinary actions and interactions, opportunities taken and missed, choices made and ignored where spiritual worship, “rational service” as Paul’s original audience heard the phrase, takes place. This daily, living, breathing, talking, eating; offering presented on the alter is no offer-what-you-like-the-way-you-like-it kind of lifestyle. Cain and Able found this out back in Genesis 4. Cain offered God what he wanted to offer God, and yet his offering was unacceptable. Able offered what God desired, and his offering was holy.
REFLECTION
What are you placing on the alter? Not as a sacrifice to be burnt up in hopes to appease, but a living offering, a tribute out of gratitude for the mercies that have been received. Is it your ordinary time? What about your interactions with your kids and co-workers? What about your expectations for life together? What about your attitude toward your roommate? What about the opportunity to act on someone else’s behalf; to take responsibility for their good? What about your kitchen table or a Tuesday night?
Or, do you willfully offer what you want to; a calendared veneration here and there as time permits, a random act of kindness when the moment is right, the minimal investment, a portion limited to what you want in return?
Paul won’t let us get too deep before he asks us to consider the soil in which we are digging, compelling us to ponder how we are responding to grace and the reality that all things are being made new—including you and I and how we live. So, is your offering living, holy, and acceptable?
Use the questions in the paragraphs above to help you prayerfully reflect individually and/or discuss as a DNA group. After you have spent some time verbalizing (speaking or writing) your reflections, spend some more time responding to “the mercies of God” which compel your offering.
REVERBERATIONS
In the context of freely choosing a life lived with regards towards others and how they relate God, the apostle Paul says these words. Let these words reflect off the walls of your mind, the chamber of your heart, and the actions of your hands this week.
Weather you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to consider everyone else’s feelings in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
(I Corinthians 10:21-11:1)