What's better than sacrifice?

Obedience.

Focused on the screen, my five year old and I were trying to slice up a whale using a saber-tooth shark--we built him, he was fierce.  (We love whales, I suppose this game is desensitizing us to our love for them).  I chopped down a tree. 

I'm a fish out of water when it comes to video games.  I breathe air, I understand air, and yet when I'm saturated in it, I have no control over myself.  I'll stick to pinball (I hear it's making quite a come back).

So, Jonah's inside a big fish when he develops his compelling thesis:  I was controlling my life and now I am not.  When we read his story in the Bible, we have the advantage of looking in on him, full screen.  He had a job to do, no matter how put off he was by it.

If obedience is better than sacrifice, I want to understand to whom I am obedient.  Relationship required.

I don't want my daughter to be obedient to just anyone.  There's too much at stake in that.  It's got to be the VIP of authority.  Out of this world authority.  Not the crème of the crop, not the one who planted it, but the one who made the seed-VIP.

Sacrifice.  It's hard.  Bloody.  There's little air (even natural things come difficult).  And it's not immediately laden with satisfaction.

I know making amends is part of living.  We teach our kids to make them.  And sometimes those amends come built with sabre-teeth don't they?  (Plenty of mine have).

If obedience is better than sacrifice.  Then knowing what is right and doing it, is better than doing what is not right and apologizing for it.

I can't think of a tidy sentence about what I want to do, but what I don't want is to become great--at making amends.