Sacrifice

When I’m in the car I listen to BBC Radio Five Live. It’s the station with all the sport…and some news! One day last week I was listening to an interview with the retired swimmer Karen Pickering. The interview was about the challenge of trying to encourage girls to engage in sport into adulthood as the fallout rate is high. I wasn’t really listening if I’m honest because it’s a topic I’ve heard discussed many times and indeed was involved in may times when I was a PE Teacher. But, suddenly and unexpectedly I found myself listening intently. Karen Pickering stared to talk about sacrifice. Apparently what puts some girls off taking up sport into adulthood is the idea of having to make sacrifices to do it, that you have to be prepared to give something up in order to be involved in sport as an adult. Maybe. But the thing that grabbed my attention and had me listening avidly to the radio was the way Karen Pickering understood sacrifice. She wanted to make a distinction between making a choice and making a sacrifice. And her reason? She gets really cross when sports stars claim they had to make lots of sacrifices to do well in their sport. And it seems, they very often do! But for Karen Pickering, they haven’t made sacrifices, they’ve made choices! And, mostly, as she would see it, pretty easy choices. For herself she recognised that she too, had had to make choices to become a top swimmer. But they were choices and not sacrifices! She had to choose not to pursue ballet to enable her to train as a swimmer. A choice! She chose swimming over other things she might have chosen to do. And, I’m with her. I have found myself getting frustrated when sports people wax lyrical about sacrifice. I find myself thinking: but most of us never get the opportunity to make the choices you did! Choice, not sacrifice. It got me thinking. There are many today making a sacrifice in Ukraine. Many who are prepared to sacrifice their life. Some already have. Others will. It’s more than a choice. Much more. And for some it has, or will, cost them everything. I find that challenging. Very challenging. It is a tragedy. It is a tragedy that reflects, in its most terrible form, the consequences of a fallen world. Sometimes though, the only way is that of sacrifice. That appears to be true at the moment in the Ukraine. And we hope it ultimately brings peace. Sacrifice is at the centre of the universe. It is, in truth the only hope we have for lasting peace. For at the centre of the universe is self-sacrifice: that Christ chose the cross. It is that act, that sacrifice, that has become the means of God’s love reaching to us, here and now and for eternity. The sacrifices of the men and women of Ukraine today we hope will bring peace. But there in only one sacrifice that affects eternity. I have to figure out how I respond to the tragedy of the sacrifices in the Ukraine. And I have to figure out how I respond to the sacrifice that affects eternity. And maybe you do too.