One of the great quests of this life,
Is to find something that matters more to you than life,
Something for which you would give up your life.
For if you do not,
Then you haven’t transcended life.
Transcended Life
If You Can Change One
If you can clean up your house, you can clean up your bad habits and build good ones instead.
If you can build good habits, you can build new friendships and cure your loneliness.
If you can cure your loneliness, you can cure your boredom and find something good to do.
If you can find something good to do, you can find something good to help others.
If you can help others, you can help your home have more peace and bring order to it.
If you can bring order to your home, you can bring order to your mind and calm it down.
If you can calm your mind down, you can calm your lusts and free your spirit.
If you can free your spirit, you can free the downtrodden and given them hope.
If you can give hope, you can give attention to what really matters.
If you can give attention to what really matters, you can give attention to God and praise Him.
If you can praise God, you can praise what is good in you and let Him purify your soul.
If you can let Him purify your soul, you can let Him purify your family and clean up your house.
If you can change but one, you can change them all.
A Choice of Integrity
A choice of integrity is a choice that I can live with for the long term and not hurt my conscience. If I am making a choice that I am willing to tolerate only for a time, but could not abide by permanently, then it is likely not a choice that I am making in integrity.
That is not to say that there cannot be changes of situation or perspective. It is possible to make one choice in integrity, and then with integrity change it afterward. It is also possible to recognize that one is entering a special season in life, and posture oneself accordingly, with the up-front understanding that after the season is over things will change.
But if from the outset I make a choice with the hope and expectation that those around me will change so that I do not have to abide by that choice any longer, then I have started without integrity. I am looking for outside sources to rescue me from my own decision, and that means I am making a violation against myself. I should not count on outside situations or people to change. I should ask myself what I would do from my conscience if they never changed, and the answer to that question is the choice of integrity.
The Best Lessons Must be Painful
The best lessons in life must be painful, because the best lessons require us to change. If they didn’t require us to change, they couldn’t be as meaningful as those that did. And to change means, to some degree, breaking and rebuilding. And breaking and rebuilding is painful.
So, if we are going through lessons that are painful, but which are causing us to change, it’s not that we are doing something wrong, we’re actually doing it exactly right. It’s just that growth is hard. That change is painful. It always has been this way, and it always will be.
The Fountain of Youth
The fountain of youth is simply having a purpose.
A man with nothing more to do is already dead.
Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 3:16-17
16 And the priest shall burn them upon the altar: it is the food of the offering made by fire for a sweet savour: all the fat is the Lord’s.
17 It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.
This chapter ends with an interesting aside, where the Lord gives a commandment to the Israelites. Parts of these animals were never to be consumed by the Israelites. The Israelites were forbidden from consuming the blood of the animal, and from eating the fat. And it doesn’t seem to be because these parts were unclean or evil, but because they instead belonged to the Lord.
From other verses it is made clear that the blood was seen as containing the life itself of the animal. It was the sacred, animating factor that turned the creature from a heap of flesh and bones to a moving, acting thing. The fat, being the richest part of the animal, represented passion, energy, and drive. Thus, the animating factor in our lives, and our passion, energy, and drive, are to be seen as belonging to the Lord, not ourselves. We should not give our passion and life to our own desires, but reserve them for the higher purposes of God.
I don’t think that is just about reserving the best of ourselves for God. That could certainly be a part of it, but I believe it is also because the forces of life and passion are too strong for us to handle on our own. They are simply too potent, too powerful. We become drunk on our own passion and we flail about, trying to find some well that is deep enough to hold them. And so, we end up indulging in addiction, gambling, unsafe sex, vanity, greed, endless partying, and false causes. They are attractive to us because they are bottomless pits that we can pour our life and passion into forever, never mind the fact that they are unworthy vessels.
Thousands of years ago God showed His people a different endless well that we could pour their lives and passion into: Him. Just as the Israelites were warned not to try and stomach the fat and blood of the animal, but to surrender it to God instead, we are meant to direct our greatest energy and vitality to His cause, and it will be for our own good.
| Sacrifice | Eligible oblation | Steps | Explanation |
| Peace Offering | Cattle, Lamb, Goat | Gratitude for reconciliation | |
| Animal is slain | Giving up old life for one of unity with another | ||
| Fat burned on altar | Giving up old plans, passions, and drives |
Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 3:2-5
2 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his offering, and kill it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation: and Aaron’s sons the priests shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about.
3 And he shall offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an offering made by fire unto the Lord; the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards,
4 And the two kidneys, and the fat that is on them, which is by the flanks, and the caul above the liver, with the kidneys, it shall he take away.
5 And Aaron’s sons shall burn it on the altar upon the burnt sacrifice, which is upon the wood that is on the fire: it is an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.
In the last post we discussed the difference in meaning between the Meat Offering and this Peace Offering. These different meanings are reflected in the different steps of the sacrifices, as we can see in today’s verses. For the Meat Offering, there was no death involved. The offeror merely gave some grain, or flour, or baked goods. The absence of a death would certainly help maintain the joyful levity that that offering represented. But with the Peace Offering a death was mandatory, which is much more fitting for the thoughtful and emotional themes of reconciliation to the Lord that the sacrifice represented.
The fact is that death is a necessary component for any reconciliation. It might be the death of the ego, where I finally put an end to my ideas and my behavior, letting them die, so that I can be reconciled to another. Or it might be the death of individuality, such as when a man marries a woman, and they lay to rest their solitary lives to begin a new one of unity. Certainly, it can also be the death of the Savior, who paid the ultimate price so that we can have ultimate oneness with God again.
And so, in this symbolic offering, a life is appropriately taken, and the fat of the animal, which represents its passions, its energy, and its drive, are laid on the altar and burned. The offeror gives up all these things to instead be subsumed into the Almighty.
| Sacrifice | Eligible oblation | Steps | Explanation |
| Peace Offering | Cattle | Gratitude for reconciliation | |
| Animal is slain | Giving up old life for one of unity with another | ||
| Fat burned on altar | Giving up old plans, passions, and drives |
Perpetually Frustrated
Living according to how we think God ought to have designed us
Is to live in perpetual frustration and impotence
Ambition Priority
Ambitions are good for life
But it is not good
If life is for the ambitions
A Worthy Life
If it takes our whole life long just to find God, and to give Him our heart, and to regain our soul, it will have been worth it.
Spiritual Wanderings 