Sacrifice

I've got a lot of thoughts floating around on this one, but I'll try to be concise.  First, love is willing to sacrifice for the good of another.

Sacrifice is a grand theme in many movies. The one I'm thinking of today is "Captain America". At the end of the movie, when Captain America crashes the flying craft into the Arctic Ocean, no one sighs in exasperation and asks, "Why did he waste his life? He could have done so much MORE!" We all recognize that according to the storyline, Captain America saved not only the United States, but the entire world and life as we know it. We consider it a worthwhile sacrifice.

You may think I'm over-dramatizing, but why then when a woman chooses to pour her mind, talents, and abilities into raising her children is it "A waste of her life/mind/education?" Mama's who accept this high calling are, in fact, preserving life as we know it. I often hear suggestions that women "take time for themselves", "take care of themselves so they can take care of their families". And where there is a place for the concept that we SHOULD do our best to take care of our bodies, it seems more like a suggestion for selfishness. Besides, childhood is SO BRIEF!

I've mentioned before that I LOVE to read. Books have been a major part of my life for longer than I can remember. But during the five years that I was having my children and before they were in school, about the only reading I did was when I read them storybooks at naptime. Was that a waste of my time/passion? I would say emphatically, "NO!!!" I was exposing them to God's world, and instilling in them a passion for books and reading. After all, you can travel millions of places in books that you might never get to otherwise. =)

So, all you mama's out there-- especially if you have little ones-- pour your life into your precious blessings for the brief years that the Lord entrusts them to your care. And remember that sooner than you can imagine, they will not be little anymore. Motherhood is a worthwhile sacrifice!

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1 John 4:9-11
 
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:1-7
 
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:4-11