“Gratefulness is more than a feeling that comes over us when good things happen. It’s an active search to notice and be present to the goodness already around us — gaining eyes to see and ears to hear the abundance God has woven into the world.”
( Dan White, Jr.)
JD asked, “How about it? Gratitude as the seeds of the fruit of the Spirit? What do you make of that?
How are you expressing your gratitude today? Are you seeing the endless loop of flourishing from generosity to gratitude to generosity to gratitude to generosity to . . . ?
The goodness and generosity of God’s Love is the seed He plants in us from conception. It will be years coming to fruition for most of us. Nurtured by the Word and Holy Spirit received from Christ, the Father’s Heritage Seed of Love grows into the flourishing, abundant vine and “Fruit of the Spirit” in our lives…. Our Gratitude, our “Thanksgiving of Praise” for God’s Generous Goodness that is “Love” in all its ripening diverse beauty, can be thought of as our “Sacrifice of Thanksgiving”, our very lives In Christ, that we present to our Lord and Master in humble appreciation as we awaken to the Kingdom’s Presence through Jesus Christ in and around us and experience the bud, blossom, and fruit that feed the sheep who are in the flock that is The Church.
Jesus had told His disciples at Jacob’s well that He had “other food” they did not know about. He had told them to feed the 5000 thousand curious followers that turned into a miracle of generosity and abundance, for which Jesus Christ gave thanks to God. He had told them the harvest was great but the laborers few. And when Christ called Peter to “feed My sheep,” it seems He was calling forth the Fruit of the Spirit of Love from Peter that could only root and sprout when Peter was freed from his guilt and shame and embraced gratitude for the Abundant, Merciful Fullness of Love that was the Original Heritage Fruit of the Heritage Seed of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ, given to His disciples, from which all further Fruit of the Spirit in mankind is harvested and sown again and again, generation after generation by the Father and brought to thriving vine and fruit by the Holy Spirit received through Christ and sustained in Christ.
As I consider this, firstborn Cain’s sacrifice was fruit of the field, cultivated and cared for by his hands. God did not find it righteous, although it truly was a labor to bring the sacrifice of “first fruits”. Did the same considerations and effort go into Abel’s slain animal? He, too, invested time and care in his gift. God Himself actually provided both first fruits brought by both men’s hands. From the beginning God seems to have been preparing His people to understand an “acceptable” sacrifice is the gift of one’s own gratitude from the heart, not comparing our own gift to others’, and accompanied by our praise and service to the will of God. Did Cain come with a sense of entitlement, of the superiority of his gift in his own mind and jealousy when God accepted Abel’s slain animal but did not count Cain’s produce as acceptable? Had Cain eaten some of his produce first so that it truly wasn’t “first fruit?” Was it the gift that was brought that determined it’s acceptability or was it rather the attitude of the giver with which it was brought? Freely with gratitude and generosity? Or with a sense of begrudging and jealousy and a sense of offense for feeling of lesser value? I think the answer may be found in Matthew 5:21-24.
21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister[b][c] will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court.And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
23 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.”
“Life is in the blood”….. not the spilling of it but in recognizing how precious it is to God and to our very existence. . Blood itself carries the “breath”. the oxygen that sustains every cell of the body…… Shedding the blood of animals can become a disconnected, “cold-blooded” pathology, a “blood sport” that means nothing to the one who spills it, as seems to have been the case with Cain, nor to the one who receives it, as the Jews’ obligatory and profuse blood sacrices came to mean little to them ….. or to God. I think God, in allowing the brutality of the cross and mass indifference to the religious leaders’ jealousy and anger over the perceived threat represented by Christ, demonstrated the extent to which hearts can, and in fact had, become indifferent to the sacrifice of blood. It is why animal sacrifice ended with Jesus…… the ultimate, final, and complete blood sacrifice as far as God’s requirement for blood sacrifice for atonement was concerned. It’s why the imagery of drinking blood is so repugnant and associated with satan worship. Jesus physically turned ceremonial water to wine at a wedding, then he turned himself, Our Living Water, into wine, but only after shedding his own blood, in the call to ceremonially remember him in the receiving of the bread and wine. We give him our lives, our suffering, our woundedness, our repentance, our covenant, our service, our all, ourselves as a living sacrifice, as we receive his blood that has become wine in the act of surrender in Communion. Life is in the blood. The blood carries the breath which is taken in and shed abroad in praise to His Name. Embracing His blood sacrifice, embracing His Spirit coursing through our own veins, heart, and lungs enables the sustaining of His breath in us, for us, through us, from us.
Cain’s unrepentant and sarcastic (?) answer to God when asked about Abel’s whereabouts, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, reveals the nature of his hardened disregard for blood-and-life…… the epitome of insensitive self-interest and lack of understanding of and care for God and others. This degree of disinterested and unrepentant disregard for one’s actions’ impact on others is the condition of individualistic self-interest that permeates life in the US today. We’ve lost so much of the sense of “united we stand”, where the good of the body restrains and sets boundaries on the indulgences of individualism’s demands for its rights, convenience, and pleasure at the expense of any sense of personal responsibility to others or to the warp and weft in the fabric of society that bind communities together.
Acceptable Sacrifice from an Alpha Article:
https://bibleinoneyear.org/en/classic/210/
https://emails.seedbed.com/view.html?x=a62e&m=Sg&mc=O&s=PZ2&u=3&z=m52obTl&pt=view