Romans 6:12-13

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
Romans 6:12-13


The phrase "yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead" is what sticks out to me in this scripture.  And I think about what our eternal lives would be like were it not for Christ's sacrifice, and really, this is a pretty literal scripture.  We *are* alive from the dead, because of the atonement.
So, project yourselves for a moment into a story.  The hero has been running around saving princesses and battling dragons.  One day, feeling pretty good about his heroic ways, he decides to take the day off from being good and he goes into the forest in search of some nice hallucinogenic mushrooms.  I mean, he knows he shouldn't and all... but since he has been doing so many good things, he figures a few mushrooms won't hurt.  Unfortunately, they do.  He finds some nice poisonous ones, and slides directly from his dreamy state into death.  Yikes, we think, reading... I mean, he is the hero.  He isn't supposed to die.  So, we tremulously turn the page, knowing SOMETHING has to save him, even now... and, miraculously, something does.  A kind wizard, passing by, sees this popular hero dead in the middle of the forest, with no-one around to help.  The Wizard, although it takes considerable effort and self-sacrifice on his part, performs the spell to save the Hero.  The Hero awakens, and instantly perceiving the sacrifice of the Wizard, swears to dedicate his life to repaying him.  The Wizard, wise and tired, looks at the Hero and simply asks him to stay on the path and not to eat any more poisonous mushrooms. :)
So, our stories are similar to this, are they not?  Although I suppose many of us eat a lot more poisonous mushrooms than others... we all have eaten at least one, and therefore we owe our lives to Him who has brought us back to life.  Christ could ask a lot more of us than he does... he could have us scrubbing pots for eternity, or make us stand on our heads every day at dawn and sing praises to him... :)  but he doesn't.  In fact, he doesn't ask anything except that we try to live our lives better than we have been... and he still loves us and wants us to come and live with him, and learn all the things that he knows.  I think that is amazing.  I mean, yielding to anything is hard... we want so much to be the hero all the time, and to have the princesses and the dragons yielding to *us* ... And I think that it is even harder when God doesn't demand anything from us... he saves us from the bad mushrooms anyway.  He does everything for our benefit, because he loves us.  So, when we recover our senses after mushroom-induced death, it might be easy to go on our way pretending that we never took that wrong path into the woods... but somewhere in the back of our minds it is always there.  Our lives have been saved... someone cared enough to rescue us from our own stupidity.  So, today... let's think about trying not to be quite as stupid.  No more searching for hallucinogenic mushrooms, okay?  Instead, I am *certain* there are some cool heroic things we can do, which will not only serve God, but help us to feel kinda heroic. :)