Be Reasonable?

It has been one of those mornings - which started with one of those nights. My husband got home too late, which meant that we went to bed way too late, and our daughter was up too many times in the night. My husband was too cheery this morning, and I was too tired to manage even a single kind word in response. At times likes these I am anything but reasonable.


But as I read Romans 12:1 this morning, this part jumped out:


"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies
as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your REASONABLE act of
worship."


I certainly felt like I had been sacrificed this morning. When I'm tired, nothing seems to make sense. But what can be reasonable about sacrifice? Since when did giving up my ways, my plans, my desires, my future, my LIFE make any sense?


When viewed through the muddled lens of my own self-focus, it certainly doesn't make any sense. But when viewed through Jesus' sacrifice, it is clearly defined. Jesus gave everything up for us though his sacrificial death, so being a living sacrifice is our only reasonable response. In “view of God’s mercy”, offering up everything that I am is the only sensible reaction. His life makes my daily efforts to live for Him something of value and worth – an act of worship.


Seth and I have been learning a lot about this lately. When God called us to move to the arid high plains, we trusted that He knew what He was doing, but I confess, we felt like He was being a bit unreasonable. This was not a place we would have chosen for ourselves. And it certainly wasn't a place that we were all that thrilled that God has chosen. It was one of those sacrifices that FELT like a sacrifice. But as the months go by, we are learning more and more about the reasons why He brought us here, and we are learning to trust in the plans He has for us. He has given us blessings beyond number here, and what we thought was really "big" of us has turned out to be yet just another way God is showing Himself to be faithful to us. How BIG of Him! We are learning that by giving up our rights, by learning to be living sacrifices, by giving up our desire for God to "reasonably" meet our expectations, we are free to worship Him - free to reasonably respond to His sacrifice with worshipful sacrifices of our own.


That's what I want to be, a reasonable, worshipful, pleasing, living sacrifice to God - albeit a very sleep-deprived one.