A Living Sacrifice

By Alexandra O'Sullivan

---

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” – Rom 12:1

Blood was first spilled to cover their nakedness –
Adam & Eve, our parents –
an animal, innocent, slain
to dress in mercy their shame and guilt.

A shadow and a typeform of the temple
where lambs bleating had
their throats slit to wash
our guilt for yet another day.

An imperfect system never perfecting. 
Living sacrifices being lifted onto altars burning
while men’s hearts grew cold and weary 
searching for liberation.

Then finally it came, or rather, He –
the One who put His glory down, like a king
would his scepter, and joined the huddled mess
of humanity in our dust, sin, and struggle.

He had no form or majesty or beauty
that we should look to Him, a root
miraculously growing out of dry ground, yet
from Him a flood of Life came quenching.

His knees calloused, His hands healing,
His life lifted up and given, a perfect sacrifice
bleeding crimson, permeating, the dust, the sin,
the struggle of humanity’s hardened, hopeless heart.

The Savior, Son, and image
of what we must become as temples of His Holy Spirit, 
our bodies, our wills, our hearts the altar where
the Sacred Flame does its holy work.

In the burning and the wrestle, 
our ways conform to His, 
as our hips are touched and ever-humbled (ever-hobbled), 
as we learn to lean on Him.

Our imperfect lives, a living sacrifice, 
our reasonable worship accepted, 
forever being perfected and pleasing
to the One who came & covered us.

---

Alexandra O'Sullivan is a wife, mother and amateur poet from Texas. She has been published in Ekstasis Magazine.