My friend was telling me what a difficult year he was having. He felt he had been forced by circumstances—or maybe by God (he wasn't sure)—to give up so much. He had found it necessary to leave a job he loved, uproot his life, put aside a number of activities that had enriched him. He said he had sacrificed so much that year but there didn't seem to be much return. What was it all for? Did it matter? Was his life going to get any better?
Most of us can probably relate to what this man was dealing with. It's difficult to feel that we're giving up something important in our lives if we see no good coming from it. Yet there is a way of considering sacrifice from a more spiritual perspective that would actually relate it to progress and to the blessings God has already bestowed on His creation, that would turn the sense of loss into a genuine gain.
It's important to recognize that it is never God's requirement that we relinquish anything truly good. Christian Science explains that God is the giver of all good, not the taker of our joy or hope or peace. God, as infinite Love and divine Life, creates and maintains all that is good in man, all that is truly satisfying and progressive. Pure Love is not the destroyer of good; nor is God, the omnipotent, divine Mind, careless about preserving the good He establishes and the blessings He bestows on His children.
