Scripture: Psalm 51:17
My sacrifice, prescription O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.

Thought for the Day: Belief in God requires sacrifice. It requires mental, spiritual, and emotional focus on God, all the time. To experience God, to truly be connected in a way that expands our consciousness beyond physical reality, into the infinite reaches of all that exists right now, simultaneously and incomprehensibly huge, yet smaller than a grain of sand, is consciousness- altering stuff. It changes us forever into compassionate beings, incapable of harming another. I think that change can be helped along by sacrificing long-held and inappropriate beliefs, and allowing God to replace them with the eternal truths of love and wisdom:

The Twelve Sacrifices and Blessings
We must sacrifice thinking of us and them, and start thinking of the human race.
We must sacrifice thinking we are separate from God, and start understanding we are made from the very being of God.
We must sacrifice thinking our relationship with God needs mediation, and start knowing we can commune with God directly, every one of us, all the time.
We must sacrifice thinking we are worthless sinners, and understand we are loved and accepted, warts and all.
We must sacrifice thinking we are forever condemned, and understand we are eternally forgiven—all of us, no matter our creed or culture or actions in this life. We are forgiven.
We must sacrifice hate to make room for love.
We must sacrifice violence to experience peace.
We must sacrifice weapons to learn how to talk to each other.
We must sacrifice every aspect of our being to God, who is every aspect of our being.
We must sacrifice dogma and doctrine, and trust our intuition and experience.
We must sacrifice loyalty to Words and rediscover loyalty to Love.
We must sacrifice ignorance and superstition for the blessings of reason and science.

Prayer: Compel me to give up the closed-minded, immature ways of thinking that are not only bad for me, but bad for the world, God who compels us all to simply love. Amen.