“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

                                                                  Romans 12:1, The Message

In the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart played a man named George Bailey who had great plans for his life. He told his fiancée, “Mary, I know what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that. I’m going to leave this little town far behind, and I’m going to see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum.  Then I’m coming back here, and I’ll go to college and see what they know, and then I’m going to build things. I’m going to build airfields. I’m going to build skyscrapers a hundred stories high. I’m going to build bridges a mile long.”

It turned out that George was completely wrong. God had other plans for him. He ended up doing every day for his whole life what he did the day before.

At the end of the movie, an angel showed him the difference he had made to everyone in his life.

By the way, Presbyterians don’t believe that when a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. 

We do believe, as the Apostle Paul said in Romans 12:1-2, when we offer ourselves as a “living sacrifice…”

When we live our lives in wonder and gratitude for the one who gave himself totally for us…

When we dedicate every moment, waking and sleeping, to him…

We don’t lose our life, we gain it.