We are His sheep, and sheep are for the altar

I just finished this book. And it made me cry. Not like, tear up. Straight up cry multiple times throughout the book.

Weird things make me cry. For instance, random scenes in Braveheart, and NOT necessarily the ones everyone is supposed to cry in, I mean ones that make your friends double take at you in disbelief and incredulously ask "Why are you crying? He's just riding the horse through the mountains!"
 Or things like reading Shadow of the Almighty. Or like watching sunsets.

 No joke, sunsets. Two days ago I was watching the sun set over the lake. It sank slowly, a majestic orange globe that threw fiery red shafts of light dancing across the rippling water, illuminating everything in its path so even the trees looked alive with gold. Juxtaposed all around were the hills full of solemn green pine trees and quiet shadowed docks rimming the lake. I listened to the cicadas buzz and the birds coo, and suddenly, I began to cry.

Have you ever felt there are things deep in your heart, things you can't put words to, but they're there? Waiting for you to learn yourself enough to comprehend them.
 And something will come along, a passage from a book, a phrase from a friend, lyrics from a song, seemingly innocent, innocuous, and it stirs those things.
Deep inside, you feel something writhing, chained by your inability to assign words and understanding. And you just have this feeling that if you knew yourself enough, if you had the insight into you, those things would bust free and maybe free you a little in the process?


As I was reading this book this morning, I suddenly was able to understand the prayer my heart has been aching to pray for a while now, but my mouth could never formulate.

It's simple, but it's earnest. And what it lacks in profoundness to anyone else it makes up for in how it resonates deep within me and silences some of the stirring that has now found it's name in this:

It is not my prayer that I live a long life, but a full one; that I learn what it means to be a living sacrifice for an Almighty God, and learn what it means to live well.

And perhaps, if God continues to show me who I am, this prayer will come alive. Actually, I'm banking on it.