The Price of Love ~ Part One

 Good Morning, or Good Afternoon, Good Evening, 

this post should take approximately five minutes to read from start to finish. 

What does the price of love means to you? What does the price of love means to a immediate relative? 
What does the price of love means to a friend of yours?

This post focuses on a BYU (Brigham Young University) Devotional in July 1982, and it is called "The Price of Love" by H. Hal Visick. This post is part one, and I would like to share with you some highlights while I was reading the Devotional. 

Brother Visick has mentioned the following; "It’s wonderful that no one ever recites your faults and failures when making an introduction. If they did, we might be here for some time. ... It’s good you don’t have to be perfect to talk about perfection, nor be Christlike to speak about Christ, or we would have few sermons from this pulpit.

Sacrifice and Love I wanted to talk today about the relationship between sacrifice and love. ... I can tell you this: You can’t have love without sacrifice. I don’t mean someone’s sacrificing for you so that you will love them. I mean you cannot love someone else or the Lord unless you pay the price. ...

Lark Mine ... Sacrifice is not paying your tithing or going to church on Sunday or filling a temple assignment, although those things are important. It’s being somewhere you’re needed, where you’ve got to serve when you’d rather be elsewhere or do something else. 

Do you think women choose as the highest of all intellectual accomplishment to take a master’s degree in physics and go home and change a dirty diaper, cook a meal, sweep the floor, make the beds? You don’t think that’s sacrifice? Then you don’t know what sacrifice is.

Sacrifice, Love, and Faith

In the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews and also in James, the second chapter, there are discourses about faith and how our forefathers proved they had faith. Some of the examples are the same in each chapter: Rahab the harlot, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and Moses giving up all the riches of Egypt to be with his people. 

The scriptures list all the actions that prove these were sacrifices of faith. By their actions they proved that they loved the Lord, that there was nothing they would withhold from him. ... It seems easy when we read it on the page, you know. The Lord came and said to Abraham, “You’ve done all that I’ve asked you to do, and now I’ve got just one more thing I want you to do. 

"There is no change without sacrifice."
- Gloria Allred.

Take your son Isaac, your only son, whom you love, and offer him as a sacrifice.” Can you imagine what Abraham felt? How long had he waited for Isaac to be born? ... After a hundred years of waiting, finally the angel came to Abraham and said, “You’re going to have a son.” 

Even Sarah couldn’t believe it because she was too old, long past the age of childbearing. After all these miracles and everything was fulfilled, and life was good - Abraham loved this boy with all his heart - the Lord came and said, “I’m going to take the thing you love the most.” 

Abraham gathered some wood and took his servants and his son (whom I take to have been either a teenager or in his early twenties). They went to the foot of the mount. He told the servants to remain, loaded the wood for the sacrifice on his son’s back, and they began to ascend. Eventually, his son asked, “Dad, where’s the animal for the sacrifice?” 

Abraham couldn’t answer. He said, “The Lord will provide the sacrifice.” ... Can you imagine the sacrifice that Isaac was willing to make? His father explained it to him. He didn’t konk this hundred-year-old man on the head and say, “You’re crazy; I’m going down the hill.” He allowed himself to be bound and placed on the altar. 

He was willing to give the sacrifice of love as well and obey his father though it cost him his life. Finally, as the knife was upraised and started its decent, only then did the Lord say, “It’s enough. You haven’t withheld from me even your son.” It is hard in words to explain our deepest feelings. ..."

Stay Tuned until next time.