Sacrifice

I was phoned yesterday by a recruiter for a university in China looking for English teachers.  One of my most important questions to the rep was, "What's the air quality like in the city where this university is?"  Last time I spent a year in China, I spent literally every other week suffering from a respiratory illness because of China's unbelievably, intense pollution.  Whenever the doctors examined my throat they exclaimed that I had extremely purple and blue bruises all over and that I should take it easy!  I'm a musician and my main instrument is my voice.  The year I spent in China damaged my singing voice in ways that I have still not recovered.  Its been two years and I'm just barely getting back to singing decently.  However, I have still not acquired the fitness level my voice once had.  Years and years of practice have gone down the drain.  I'm not meaning to boast in anything but Christ, but just to emphasize the sense of loss I felt, this was a voice that once won countless competitions, including several county pageant titles and qualified to compete at Miss Idaho.  This was a voice that paid half my way through college.   This is not a sacrifice I want to make again.  

When the phone call ended, I resumed my normal memory verse review.  The next verse that I was reviewing, elementary as it may seem was John 3:16 (the Message), "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son.  And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life."  This verse hit me hard and in a new way.  I thought, 'If God loves the world so much that he gave up his only son, so that people could have life, why can't I give up something so small as my singing voice so that I can share that life with them?'

Then today, in my normally scheduled Bible reading , I read Malachi 1:14 (the Message), "A curse on the person who makes a big show of doing something great for me-- an expensive sacrifice, say-- and then at the last minute brings in something puny and worthless!  I'm a great king, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, honored far and wide, and I'll not put up with it!"

I am not saying that I will surely go to China to teach again (I have a husband who would have an opinion on the matter so I must confer with him), but I am saying that when you really love someone, you would make sacrifices for them.  God really loved us and because of this love he made the biggest sacrifice that a person could give: his Son.  If I really love God, I will really love his people.  If I really love his people, I would sacrifice one of the things I cherish most, my voice, if that is what God calls me to do.  I cannot complain that this is too costly a sacrifice as I would not be able to sing if God didn't give me this talent and a mere singing voice is absolutely nothing, a toilet rag, compared to the beautiful sacrifice God made for us in sending Jesus.