Spiritual Buffalo

I've been teasing out a few posts for the last week now, and I think I've finally solidified the first piece out of it all.

Last weekend, I saw my current favorite artist (if it hasn't been obvious up until now), Sara Groves, in concert. She prefaced the title song of her latest album, "Add To The Beauty", with a story. Many years ago she saw the movie "Dances with Wolves" and a scene that particularly struck her and stuck with her was the one where they find a huge number of buffalo slaughtered, with the myriad of useful parts just wasted. More recently in Africa, she realized that she hadn't been using "all of her spiritual buffalo" -- that the various things in her life could be used for much greater purposes in God's kingdom.

This idea is tied closely with redemption. When God redeems us, we primarily understand it to refer to the justification and forgiveness of sins we receive from Christ's death. But another part is sanctification, which I understand to mean that while we are on earth, He is progressively making us to increase in holiness, and in likeness to him. We have the command to "be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect" -- part of our redemption is the daily steps in that direction, through God's grace.

I now think of passages like Romans 6:13, instructing us to offer the parts of our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness, and 1 Corinthians 10:31, saying that whether we eat, drink, or whatever we do, to do it for the glory of God. These are referring to individual actions and compartments of our lives, and each and every one of them is to be individually redeemed along with the whole. Thinking in this framework has helped me greatly in the past week to look to God in many more ways than I had before, and to flee from temptations. I find myself praying that these little things -- my eating and drinking, my going and coming, my work, school, and leisure, and many more things -- would all be redeemed. And when I find myself considering a markedly "unredeemed" course of action in one of these areas, it occurs to me that God does care about how I use the resources He's given to me, including the situation at hand.

Anyway, here's the song:

We come with beautiful secrets
We come with purposes written on our hearts, written on our souls
We come to every new morning
With possibilities only we can hold, that only we can hold

Redemption comes in strange place, small spaces
Calling out the best of who we are

And I want to add to the beauty
To tell a better story
I want to shine with the light
That's burning up inside

It comes in small inspirations
It brings redemption to life and work
To our lives and our work

It comes in loving community
It comes in helping a soul find it's worth

This is grace, an invitation to be beautiful
-- Sara Groves, Add To The Beauty, "Add To The Beauty" (2006)