This is breakfast. In an exotic country, relatively far from home. It is not all that different from the breakfast that I eat in my home most mornings. But this breakfast represents a pretty big sacrifice. This breakfast was put together by the women of a small church in Mexico. I was there with a team who was about the tile the floor of their building. And their job was to feed us. And they pulled together all they had, and offered it to us. Some of the best meals I have eaten have been the sacrificial meal that others have pulled together for me. I will never forget lunch that same day, bean tacos. They were fabulous. Refried beans so smushed down and larded over that there were no bean fragments remaining. And hot deliciously fresh hand made corn tortillas. I asked a friend from Mexico who lives in the US where I could get good bean tacos in the US. And he laughed, “no one gonna serve you bean tacos, that’s what poor people eat.”
I am afraid its a first world problem that we think a sacrifice is giving up something that we typically are fortunate enough to have or want to have. When for a great deal of the world a sacrifice is not having the ability to have something you need. Church leaders talk about sacrificial giving out of the abundance of what we already have, when others give sacrificially out of what they don’t yet have. And I am pointing that finger at myself as much as anyone else, but the reality of the day is, some have it and keep it, while others offer all, even when they are not sure where it may come from.
How will we embrace the spirituality of sacrifice?
searchingforthinplaces 