Sweet Sacrifice

Have you ever watched a movie that haunted you for days afterwards? Not necessarily a feel good, happy ending type of story, but one that set loose a yearning inside you nonetheless?

I’m tired of the rags to riches stories. I’m done with plots that exhort the virtues of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. And frankly, sappy “best life now” films gag me. Because you know what? I found them all to be lies. Every rag I traded for a silk robe, created in me nothing more than a desire for more fluff. Pulling myself up by my determination and my efforts alone kept me wallowing in a self-indulgent mire. Visualizing success and viewing God as a vending machine blinded my eyes with spiritual cataracts.

Decades ago I knew a guy. He was going on about being a self-made man; all that he had, he had earned himself. I looked around his sparsely furnished studio apartment, saw his bicycle in his parking space where a car would normally be, and thought, “Hmm. I’m not too sure I’d brag about that.” Now I look at my own life. I started out with little, picked up a few trinkets along the way, then picked up a few more, and here I am. Surrounded by trinkets. And I think to myself, “Hmm. I’m not too sure I should be bragging about this.”

I watched That Beautiful Somewhere the other night. It’s not a great movie by any stretch, maybe not even a good one. But there were elements in it that struck a chord in my heart. Its stark loneliness and the quiet beauty of the barren landscape in which it was filmed frame the message the director struggled to put forth.

The theme was sacrificial love.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to realize that those are the stories that captivate me. Is it because it’s so foreign to the way I live? Or is it because in my heart of hearts I know that it is the only way of living that brings joy? Is there something in the human psyche that identifies with truth, even when we reject it? And why oh why is it that Hollywood can figure that out when it’s been so difficult for me, a follower of the Truly Sacrificial One, to come to realize?

Saving Private Ryan, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Lord of the Rings movies, Black Hawk Down, Armageddon, they’ve been saying it all along. There is something about the giving of oneself that makes life real.

Recently I read about an event from the life of St. Francis. Apparently, shortly after his conversion he sensed God telling him, “Francis, all those things that you have loved in the flesh you must now despise, and from those things that you formerly loathed you will drink great sweetness and immeasurable delight.” I may be stretching the interpretation of the words, but I read in that that those things I fear will be a source of not only goodness but also wonder and edification for me. Those paths that I would never choose to tread will be the ones that lead me to the place for which my heart is longing. And if I open my eyes along the way, the trails themselves will begin to glimmer like gold.

You see, I think sacrificial living is one of those things I loathe. My baser nature recoils from it. In my tiny brain it’s all about me, it’s always been about me, and I want it to continue being about me.

Except when I know differently. Every once in a while I get what author Gary Thomas has dubbed “splashes of glory.” Snippets of life as it’s supposed to be. Kingdom glimpses, if you will. I think that’s what God was hinting at with St. Francis those centuries ago.

I think what I’ve been missing for so long, what the Church may have been missing for a while, is the great sweetness that comes from beautiful acts of self sacrifice. It’s one of God’s paradoxes to be sure. On those rare occasions when we lay down our own desire for no other reason than our love for God or one of His creatures, the unexpected immeasurable delight that follows takes our breathe away.

I’m not sure why I’m so amazed by this. After all, sacrifice is death, pure and simple. With each little death we encounter, maybe we’re given bits of the resurrected life in return.

How’s that for “your best life now?”