There is a well known passage of scripture taken from Romans 12. It asks of us to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” Someone made the remark that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep trying to crawl off of the alter.
I was thinking the other day about some really practical ways to observe the extent to which I am presenting my life as a living sacrifice. Like President elect Barak Obama, I have become very attached to my “Black Berry.” Not simply because it keeps me connected (more than I need to be) but also it contains my calendar and my “To Do” lists.
What would my calendar and those multiple lists look like on a “Black Berry” that had been presented to God? What if I applied a filter to all of that information that must first meet the criteria of “What God wants me to accomplish today”?
This idea came to me as I was talking to a young man at lunch yesterday who has joined the Army. Some of the guys were teasing him and someone said, “Well, one thing about it. You won’t have to be worrying about what you are going to do today. Now you will have somebody telling you what you are doing, as well as when and how you are doing it.”
Wow! I don’t know how I would feel about that.
Sometimes I think it would be a relief for someone to say, “you don’t have time to do that” or to tell me, “you need to say “no” here because you’ve more important things that have to be done”. But before I am able to convince myself that it would be a relief, I see those other things. Those other things are bad habits, and “goof off” time, and “procrastinators anonymous” meetings, and other stuff I don’t want to mention.
I can see that presenting my calendar and tasks to God is going to be a major challenge for me. So, I shall think more on this tomorrow. Because today I’ve got — “finish the newsletter,” —on my “to do” list.