Be the bigger person! Have you ever heard that? I'm not going to stoop to her level. How about, Take the high road? This is the relationship advice I've received over the years. It's not entirely bad, but it isn't very good either. We certainly don't want to imitate another's bad behavior, and two angry or vengeful people don't exactly improve a difficult situation, but there's a difference between taking a path of righteousness and taking the right path.
Recent circumstances have forced me to take a look at our marriage. Specifically, why I do what I do. Am I being selfless, am I sacrificing my time, am I working hard because I want to be a better person, because this is where I am in my relationship with Jesus? or because I want to be the better spouse? Is my behavior a response to Christ's challenge to live a righteous life? or is it grounded in my desire to be right, to outdo another?
Psalm 66:13-15 (NKJV) says:
I will go into Your house with burnt offerings;
I will pay You my vows,
Which my lips have uttered
And my mouth has spoken when I was in trouble.
I will offer You burnt sacrifices of fat animals,
With the sweet aroma of rams;
I will offer bulls with goats. Selah
Robert Alter's translation renders verse 15 thus:
Fat burnt-offerings I shall offer up to You
with the incense of rams.
I shall sacrifice cattle and goats.
The psalmist lived in an agrarian society. Their farms, their sheep, their cattle were not only their means of providing food for their families, but the products they sold or traded to others were their livelihood. A fatted calf could bring good money at market. The breeding services of a prime ram could be traded for clothing or another commodity. Who would lay out feed, stall space, and the time it took to bring up a lamb simply to let it be burnt up that the priest might sup on those savory-sweet lamb chops? Who could afford it? But they did. They fattened their livestock specifically for the purpose of giving the best right off the top to the Lord. Fat burnt-offerings I shall offer up to You. We might paraphrase it this way:
"I am doing my absolute best, giving the most I've got, making things as inconvenient and lean and uncomfortable for myself, laying it all on the line and then seeking out more to give that You might be honored in a way fitting the King of all kings, the God who made heaven and earth, my Abba Father."
The premise of Oswald Chambers' famous devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, is that we might give our choicest, unrivaled, intentionally fattened best for God's greatest glory through our lives, expecting nothing in return but to yield to Him all He deserves. That is righteousness. That is the only honest goal of selflessness, sacrifice, and hard work. Not to be better than others. Not to prove ourselves right. Not to make those around us look inferior. But to fatten our sacrifice for the One who is truly worth of it. To fatten our sacrifice for a holy and almighty God.
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