Lent Day 5: Dying to self

"...whoever loses their life for my sake will save it..."

I've been thinking a lot about this verse and opened the lectionary to find that it is next week's Gospel lesson. 

There is great honor for those who sacrifice themselves for others. Those amazingly brave teachers last week. Soldiers, police, rescue workers all put themselves in harms way to keep people safe. But for most of us who do not have that particular call, the request to lay down your life doesn't come often, if ever.

Or does it?

Dying to self each morning is a choice. 

What is on the agenda for the day? 

Is it in service of God, of others, or of myself?

What drives my actions?

Getting more,

building my resume,

accumulating stuff,

having fun,

being happy?

or being a light in the world that drives out darkness?

Choosing how I orient my life is a choice of whether I live for myself or I live for something beyond myself. And those who choose to die to self daily often have no problem finding the courage to place themselves in harms way should the moment arrive. They have done it in a 1,000 little ways. 

By why -- why lay down your life for others?  why would anyone take a bullet for anyone else?

I don't have a clear answer for this. It is obscured beyond the veil of death and something we can only glimpse at with incompleteness. For this, I turn to Corinthians... "Now we know in part, then we will know in full.... until then there is faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love."

Love, indescribable, powerful, earth-moving.

It drives out the fear of death and enables us to sacrifice in ways that we never would otherwise. 

In the moments that I have been able to truly lay down my own self in service of God or others, I have found a life that is permeated with love. For me.. that gives me hope in the promise of these words.