One of my favorite pieces in the library at SUMC is An Offering, by Dan Forrest. The choir has presented it as an anthem in our traditional service a couple times in the last 5 years or so. It is worth listening to if you don’t know it; in fact go do that if you are so inclined.

O Christ, Who spared not any cost, nor any grace withheld, but poured forth Your redeeming blood in love unparalleled. What would you have me offer, Lord? What must I count as loss that I may taste the fellowship that brings me near Your cross? Why should I cling to gifts You give? Why grasp in foolish pride? What You who gave Yourself for me now bid me lay aside? To know You is my highest gain worth any sacrifice. A treasure worthy to possess at any earthly price. Yet if behind my open hands, my heart shrinks from the cost, teach me that nothing offered You is ever truly lost. A hundredfold reward awaits in one glimpse of Your face. My sacrifice forgotten in the riches of Your grace.

Dan Forrest

The first time I heard this song I was struggling hard with the things that I was setting aside to better support Danny; we had hit a wall with him and the only options we could come up with involved doing more at home and less everywhere else. This song spoke directly to my heart at a time when I absolutely needed to hear it. It was painful to walk away from the things I had built and poured myself into but in the end I had no regrets; there really isn’t anything more important than what your child needs.

Nothing more crucial than what keeps your family safe and healthy and whole.

In the last year, what it takes to do those things has been costly in ways we could never have imagined. But it is a holy thing to make sacrifices for those you love.

So if March finds you looking over the sacrifices of the last year with deep pain and sadness, you are not alone. And when your thoughts turn to the celebrations that should have happened, opportunities that couldn’t materialize, or resources you no longer have; consider maybe that you haven’t lost these things, but given them.

“Yet if behind my open hands, my heart shrinks from the cost, teach me that nothing offered You is every truly lost.”