Tag Archives: sacrifice

 

I read The Legend of the Bluebonnets for the first time in school at about the age of ten.   Talk about a hero.  She-Who-Is-Alone is a young Indian girl who has lost her family in a terrible drought.  The only reminder of her family is a much beloved doll made by her grandmother.  The Great Spirits have called for a sacrifice from the people; an offering which in turn would cause the drought to end.  It is the young girl in the story who selflessly gives all that she has for the good of her people.  While others dance and “ask for help” she goes it alone.  She knows what she has to do and she does it.  She sacrifices her precious doll; the one thing she has left of her family. As she casts her doll into the fire, she waits in darkness as the fire cools.  Then spreading the ashes and waiting through the night, she awakes to a blanket of blue.  In place of withered grass and death, the land is now covered in bluebonnets. Because of She-Who-Dearly-Loves-Her-People  new life has sprung. 

      Does a hero like this exist?  Sure.   From a child offering the last cookie to a friend to a firefighter or soldier giving his very life to save another’s; sacrifices great and small are made every day.  But no sacrifice ever made in history compared to the sacrifice our God made two thousand years ago. 

     The world we live in (like the world two thousand years ago) was much like the land in this story.  People were sick, just as we are sick in sin. We have not been perfect and holy, we sin every day.   In all the land there was a thirst that brought about death because there was no water to carry on life. A great sacrifice was needed to bring about a rain from heaven.   Because we have each sinned we don’t have a forever life.  In my mind, this is like the picture of the grass which was fading in the story.  There must have been hungry bellies with such little food.  Likewise, each of us has a heart which is made to hunger for God.  In each of us is a hunger all the good of the world could never fill.

      He-Who-Is God-Alone  is the hero of our story. He alone is perfect. He wants to share holy heaven with us.  We can’t be a part of something perfect with our sin attached to us.  God alone could make a way for death to die; a way to take our sin from us.  Because He doesn’t wish for us to waste away he gave his most prized possession over to death; his very son.  Yes.  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish (die) but have eternal (forever) life.  John 3:16 NIV

      He-Who-Dearly-Loves-His-People allowed his only son to die. And as his perfect son died, our sin died with him as we believe in him.  I think sometimes we mindlessly think our forever lives with God start when we die and go to heaven.  Not so!   In the story new life was bright in bloom as the bluebonnets covered the land the next morning. Remember that Jesus didn’t stay on the cross.  He rose again.  The moment you give your life to Jesus, that old sin life dies.  You are a new creation.  Your forever life has begun!  It’s the season of the bluebonnets.  Be bright and beautiful as you display God’s love and sacrifice to a dry and thirsty land.

 

*If you have never given your life to Jesus.  Answer these questions:

1.Do you know and believe that God is perfect?

2. Do you know and believe that you are not?

3. Do you trust that Jesus died on the cross and came back to life three days later?

4.Do you believe that your sin (all your imperfect ways/the things that you have and will do wrong) were put to death on the cross with him?

5. Just as Jesus rose again, do you believe that your forever life in Christ has begun and he lives in you?

If you believe these things, he already knows you do.  Thank him and share with others what he has done for you.  

Click on the link to read The Legend of the Bluebonnets.

http://www.coedu.usf.edu/culture/story/story_texas.htm