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The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruption. Normal routines have been upset. If you’re like me, you’ve sometimes wondered what day it is, you’ve been extremely unproductive, and you have harbored a lot of unexplainable angst. Today it took all the willpower I could muster to download a form, fill it out and send it to someone. This was probably 30 minutes of task, max. Yet there I was, in the valley of decision. As if I was contemplating joining my Greek brothers at Thermopylae. Hmm. What is that all about? So I’ve just considered myself “stuck”. Not just stuck at home but inwardly stuck – seemingly without motivation or desire.

Surely some of this is simply the result of the stay at home realities that we’ve all been facing. Any sense of feeling unwell has me wondering if I’ve contracted the virus. Being in close quarters with my family hasn’t quite worked out like those cute YouTube families having a great time together. When our outer world gets messed up our inner world is affected. But as my outer world has become much less active and more still, my inner world has gone the opposite direction. I’m irritable, unable to concentrate. Do I have OCD? Watching eight episodes of “Picard” in two days hasn’t helped either. It just delays the inevitable.

So how do I get unstuck? Do something different. Go somewhere different. Change the environment. Okay Dave, that isn’t helping much because nobody can go anywhere. But we can. I’m doing it right now. This is my therapy. I’m not writing a paper or some missiological document, I’m verbally processing. I’m doing something I don’t normally do. I’m hopefully using a different side of my brain, hoping that my synapses will soon reconnect and I can be “back to normal”. Maybe the part of the brain I usually rely on is brain-dead and I need to switch tanks. Perhaps God even leads us to such times for this very purpose. To just be. . . empty.

A colleague sent me this recently (sorry there is no citation): “I worry too much. Autumn trees ask me not to worry. They, like Jesus, suggest trust rather than worry. So often in autumn I want to go lean my head against a tree and ask what it feels like to lose so much, to be so empty, so detached, to take off one’s shoes that well, and then simply to stand and wait for God’s refilling.” Yeah, something like this. To just be empty. To trust. To wait for the next season. What if we viewed our lives more through the lens of seasons? What if it was okay to experience winter? What if the bleak stillness of winter is necessary for the rich fullness of summer? What if I’m not a robot? What if I go through seasons? What if I’m a sailor and the winds don’t always blow? Perhaps it is okay to take a nap in my boat, to listen to the water lapping against the hull, to hear the birds, to feel the warmth of the sun. Sounds rather appealing, doesn’t it?

I feel better already. I did something besides stare blankly at the news or social media feed. My emptiness, once engaged, led to something creative. Not brilliant, but at least I created something that didn’t exist before. Come to think of it, I haven’t explored the emptiness very much. What if we thought of emptiness as creative space? Makes me wonder what else is in there.

One little phrase, two small words: living sacrifice. This is Paul’s first application, his first exhortation to us in Romans 12 after eleven chapters of theology. To be a living sacrifice is an oxymoron. By definition, a sacrifice is something that has died and is no longer living. To make matters worse, a sacrifice always benefits other people. The reward for being a sacrifice is death. It is therefore self-denying. It gets worse yet again. To be a “living” sacrifice implies dying over and over again. We like to jump to the part about renewing our minds, which sounds far more appealing, but Paul is saying, as the rest of the chapter makes clear, that the main way we renew our minds is with an attitude of self-denial and serving others.

This is surely a main reason why Christianity is such a stumbling block to those outside and such a challenge to those within. The main point is self-denial and serving others. Where does an ambitious person go with that? Not far. What does a proud person do with that? Not much. We love to be on the receiving end of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, but we struggle with the “Go and do likewise.” To be a living sacrifice means daily self-denial, putting others before ourselves, and obeying all the impossible commands listed in Romans 12:9f. This is totally contrary to human nature. Its like a person would need to be born all over again to live this way. Being born again means living life under a totally contrary and different mindset, one that is so foreign to human nature that making the switch is considered a brand new existence. Most Christians I know, including myself, are born again in theory but in practice – not so much.

What you don’t see anywhere in Romans 12 is Christian triumphalism. It is to live by dying, to win by losing, to succeed by failing. To be in the presence of a living sacrifice, someone truly born again, is a rare and awesome experience. They are there for you, they are present in the moment, they are seeking God’s best for you. They have gotten over themselves. Many of us are too busy making something of ourselves to invest this way in others. The good news is that we don’t have to go on a search for self-denial and serving others. Opportunities for such beckon on a daily basis. Its a school that is always in session, though with few interested students.

The Utility of Emptiness

On Being a “Living Sacrifice”