About Christianity

in the years you spent on earth, how many sacrifices have you made? countless i guess. be it big or small, we all make sacrifices. from the small ones, we sacrifice our play time for the supposedly beneficial studies and the exams. for having more waking hours we sacrifice more sleeping time.

big ones? maybe for her family a mother might sacrifice her career (hey that is a big sacrifice...) and stay at home whole day like a person is under house arrest. or like an older sibling who went out to work to support the family because both parents are dead. our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed himself on the cross to save the world.

there are many other sacrifices we make as we go on with our lives. as we grow older, since i am speaking from the point of a very young adult, having passed my 21st birthday uneventfully (grumpy? no...i hope) 3 months ago, we find the sacrifices we have to make get bigger and bigger.

of all the sacrifices we made, how many of them actually achieved its purpose? don't get it? maybe i explain with an example i am too familiar with. i love to play games. but when exams come, i stopped playing. i studied. but when i study, i don't really concentrate. i have a very short concentration span. and i get distracted easily. in the end, i spent more time slacking away, doing nothing. now, is my sacrifice on computer gaming useful? apparently not.

if we magnify to bigger things, we might see that we are also making big, unneccessary sacrifices. in the office, we are all used to politics. backstabbing - one of the most favored techniques of all times, is a sure way to sacrfice your friends and colleagues. people do that to climb up. people do that to get out of trouble. but if we do that, are we guaranteed a place above? maybe, maybe not.

there was this fictional story about this man who climbed up the ladder of the mafia organization very fast. along the way, he sacrificed many people, including his best friend. why did he want to be at the top? because according to him, he don't want to be poor and helpless, as he experienced as a child. at the top, he finally realized, that although he was poor when he was younger, he had his friends. those were the times that made him really happy. in the end, he realized that bonds were worth more than money.

but like that story, there are sacrifices that cannot be taken back. in fact, sacrifices cannot be reversed. that is why they are called sacrifices. we all have a goal, i hope. and as we go towards that goal, sacrifices are inevitable. big or small, we still have to make a choice. for some, they can betray friends. for some, they can offer their time and energy, their youth. for others, they can sacrifice every single thing they have.

if we just imagine ourselves at the goal, what do we want? or maybe, the correct way to phrase it would be, 'why do i want to be there?' keeping this question in your mind would help you not make the wrong sacrifices. you would not want to reach there only to find that everything is meaningless because of the things you gave up. have you ever looked back and said, 'how i wish time could reverse and i could be there once more...'? yes, you do. i know. i often think of such impossible wishes too.

why do we think that? because we have regrets. we made the wrong decisions. am i wrong? what is done cannot be undone. if today you have to make a decision, the most probable thought you would have would be how costly it is. you would not think of whether it would be meaningful to reach to your goal. you would not even think if you reach the goal finally, would this sacrifice you are about to make render the whole process meaningless?

many times we focused too much on the goal, and we forgot about the original purpose of getting to the goal. if my goal is to be rich so i can live a happy life, then would sacrificing all your friends for that make you happy? if my goal is to score in the exams, would sacrificing my computer game time for slacking achieve my purpose?

to be content. if we are to be content with the things we have, life would be much easier. of course, i am again speaking as a person who lived a blessed life. i do not live in war zones, i do not starve. i have a home. i have a family. i could not say i am very happy. but i can say i am blessed.

we only have say 70 years, 80 years of life. don't waste it on pointless goals. sometimes being content can actually lead to a happier life. some people, in a bid to get to their goal, lost more than what they had started with.

if there is a goal which we should attain at all cost, i guessed it is to follow Christ and get to heaven one day. because that reward is eternal. using temporary things we sacrificed we gained eternal things. well, so much talk about sacrifices. i kept on repeating that word. at 0100H, my brain is non-functioning.

my blogging desires compelled me to blog. and after this, i am going to complete my drawing which i had started doing earlier today. i know i am a goner tomorrow with only less than 5 hours of sleep.