God saw Abraham's sacrifice and said, "Now I know that you love me, because you did not withhold your only son from me." But how much more can we look at his sacrifice on the Cross, and say to God, "Now, we know that you love us. For you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from us."
Am I the only one in the universe who downplays that? Am I the only one who diminishes the sacrifice a little, believing that the sacrifice for me personally on the cross isn't as great as the sacrifice Abraham faced?
Isaac was Abraham's and was a sacrifice to God. Jesus was God's and was a sacrifice to us- to the billions of us. I think I'm not alone when I excuse myself from true faith because I see the sacrifice as a small piece of a huge pie that was disbursed to the world rather than an entire sacrifice for me personally. If my part in the sacrifice is just one slice, my life is not all that important, and so if I don't read my Bible today, or even if I ignore God entirely, that's ok because it's just a slice. It's like I'm Jesus' baby toe. Sure, it would suck to lose a baby toe, but it's not nearly as important as other parts, like, say, the heart.
But that's exactly it. If God knows all the birds by name, then He knows me, and if He knows me, the sacrifice was personal. If I was the only human, would the sacrifice have occurred? Probably, if not eventually. The sacrifice didn't occur because God decided that He wanted the important people in heaven and this was the only politically correct means to the end. It occurred because I, as any other, am broken beyond self-repair.
So what if I am not an infinitely small slice of some universally disbursed pie?
It's a heart issue. To whom, or to what, does my heart belong? The worst case scenario is that it belongs to me and me alone. What kind of heart would that be? And if it wasn't mine, if it belonged to somebody or to a thing, is that somebody or thing really of greater importance than God?
Or maybe my heart's just fearful. Maybe I'm afraid to actually mean something to somebody. Maybe it's more comfortable to be a nobody. But then if God created me and knows me better than I will ever know myself, wouldn't He be what's most comfortable? If God created me and delights in me, wouldn't I already be a somebody, regardless of my self-perception?
So I'm not Jesus' pinky toe.
At worst, I am His whole body, the suffering and the pain.
At best, I am His heart.
And if I'm His heart, shouldn't He have mine?
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