Self...

Selfishness. Self-sacrifice.

Two totally different words with totally opposite meanings.

Selfishness. Concerned about self. Interested in self. Placing one's own needs or desires in front of other's needs or desires.

Self-sacrifice. Concerned about others. Interested in others. Sacrifice of oneself or one's own interests for the benefit of others.

One of my favorites and I sat at a coffee shop tonight talking about these two words. Selfishness...and...self-sacrifice. We both acknowledged that we are really good at the first one.

It's MY turn to shower and she is messing up MY routine. I always shower at 7 am.
Let her borrow MY necklace? What if she loses it? or breaks it?

We are selfish with our time and our things.

We have some friends that are really good at self-sacrifice.

You're cold? Here, take MY jacket.
I'll eat last in case there isn't enough food.

My favorite and I acknowledged that we should take notes from our friends and work on being less selfish and more self-sacrificial.

Interestingly enough, tonight we had our chance.

When I called one of my other favorites, he seemed to need some encouragement. Hard day.

What part of self came out at this point?

He's sad. I don't want to him to be sad. What can I do to bring him joy? I immediately began mentally planning for a late night. No question. If he needed encouragement my sleep would wait...all night if it needed to.

So maybe I'm a little bit hard on myself...but it's pretty easy to be self-sacrificial with my favorites.

I'm going to try to be more aware of what part of self comes out more often. Not only to my favorites, but to all those around me. I'm going to try to be more like my self-sacrificing friends. Less about me. More about others. I'm going to try to be more like my friend, Jesus.

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:6 - 7