Sacrificial Multiplication

How do you multiply any living thing? How do you guarantee that something valuable will go on? How do ensure that time doesn't steal something beautiful and leave it to be forgotten? 

These are questions I'm mulling over after having watched a recent show all about the preservation of old rose types. After hearing how these gorgeous, old-fashioned varieties are being left to die out in favor of the standard, mass-produced ones, I'm suddenly asking myself if this isn't a bigger issue than flowers. Perhaps it's also a question for the people, too. 

In our pursuit of the good life, are we maybe abandoning things from our past that ought to still have their place in this world? Are we silencing voices that actually have the most wisdom to offer? Are we denying some a chance to leave a legacy simply because we've their contributions out-of-date and unpopular, inconvenient? Overlooking our own diamonds in the rough, so to speak? 

Really, how do you propagate something of great worth that you want to preserve and not leave on the dust heap of history forever? 

You copy it. You take from it... leave parts of it with others who can steward it well and help it live on. 

In order to become a gift - in order to make certain that you go on in some way - something must be sacrificed. You must lose something of yourself in order to ensure that who you were and what mattered to you and why you chose the road you did continues in the hearts of others after you're gone. 

Gardeners prune and try to push back time as brambles and briars threaten to choke out what's left of these centuries-old beauties and somehow, I feel as though I'm trying to save something too. Trying to make all of my clippings and losses matter also. Trying to be certain that I'll still bloom, even in the very face of tragedy itself. Because there is always something attempting to put you out of style and relevance... always somebody saying that your story is unimportant or that you're too much or not enough. Always some reason why what you're doing to change the world for good isn't valuable or even that it isn't flashy or trendy enough. 

So how do you do what these flower-lovers are doing and leave something permanent? How can you resist the enclosure of these dream-chokers and joy-stealers and determine you are still going to cultivate a life and a hope that will go beyond you? How do you make all the growing and hurting and struggling and surviving mean something and not be worthless in the end? 

And suddenly, I'm asking myself...

What if all my prunings and losses were simply ways for my heart to be multiplied? What if I can't be the gift I'm meant to unless I allow myself to be cut a little, to endure some wounds in order to be shared and released into the world for good?

Wow. That cuts deep. Like thorn-pokes, I'm convicted and startled because... why hadn't I seen it sooner? All the writing and the sharing and the helping and the giving from a broken heart - it's all part of propagating the world with more truth and more light and more love and more hope. It's taking the clippings of my soul and putting them out there - sending them forth to grow something bigger and more meaningful than just my own story or my own life. 

We always belong to something bigger and unless we see that this journey isn't just for us but also for who we'll touch along the way, then we've failed to understand what this is all about in the first place: sacrifice. The Hebrew roots of the word denote something larger than bringing an offering to an altar for religious purposes. The word Zavach actually relates to the idea of "giving up what is close to your heart to have a relationship with God." It's about bringing the dearest and best of who you are and what is important to you and placing it as subservient to a higher purpose. 

Giving up what is close to your heart... 

Yes, I think I know a thing or two about that. 

In the here and now, it then strikes me that there's something far greater in play in that little Bible verse in Hebrews 13:15 where it states, "let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise - the fruit of lips that openly profess His name." This is about a laying down of sorts. Zavach. A praising that involves giving up what is close to your heart. A glorious exchange of letting go - of being emptied - in order to be filled. And why wouldn't this probably involve some pain? After all, the clipping and pruning are, metaphorically speaking, uncomfortable. 

Suddenly, I see the picture everywhere: if you want to leave a tangible piece of yourself in the world, you offer yourself physically to someone else and together, your givings create a life. If you want to leave art and beauty in the world, you give your time and your mental powers to creating music or sculpture or writing or painting or architecture that will exist after you are gone. If you want to leave positive memories and good feelings, you have to invest emotionally in the relationships around you. And yes, if you want to save something that is dying out of interest or value, you have to find a way to multiply it. Propagate it. Copy it so that there is something left to keep it going. 

Fail to tell the stories, share the lessons, leave some clippings along the way to be kept and stewarded once you are no longer around to give them yourself, and the mission dies with you. In order to live a life that is meaningful, we must make disciples in a way. We must involve trusted others in the passion and the purpose that drives us forward so they can take the prunings they received from you and place in their own soul-gardens to bloom. 

So maybe all the honest-sharing and the heart-baring and the soul-tearing isn't just about the benefit of my own life. Maybe it's also putting forth chutes and cuttings that, collectively, help to restore and renew the world. Help to heal and mend a few more lives. Drop seeds that initially feel like death but are then used to bring forth greater life than you ever thought possible. 

This. This right here is the human cycle. And this is why Jesus Himself said that unless a seed went into the ground and died, there could be no fruit. Don't want to produce anything,? Then don't give anything yourself. Don't let your life be pruned. Don't practice zavach. But, if you're thinking bigger than just your one chance at this story... if you're seeing something greater than your own journey... then things become clearer and you can see. 

Whoever you are, whatever you're doing, and wherever your own personal zavach may take you, let the clipping back and the cutting through offer something of worth. Allow your blooms to be larger and your branches to reach higher and all the prunings to go farther because, at the end of the day, multiplication is essential to the continuation of the human existence. Unless we give something, we will not live on. 

So may we not be as those dying breeds that are slowly but steadily fading away out of value. Rather, let's start reframing our dying and our shedding and our releasing and begin to see them as means to a greater end - an end redeemed by God and used for the beautification and restoration of this fallen world. And end that somehow makes even our worst pains worth the sacrifice.