I will offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving* and call upon the Name of the LORD. Psalm 116:15.
This Psalm excerpt was included in my Divine Hours morning prayer today. The phrasing “sacrifice of thanksgiving” struck me. According to my two minute google search, in the old days of the Hebrew Bible you would offer a literal sacrifice in the temple after having been delivered from some great peril. Slaughter a lamb, consecrate some bread, gather friends and family and have a thanksgiving meal. “Todah” was what they called this meal – the Last Supper was apparently a todah meal, in addition to being a celebration of Passover.
Now, when I initially read this, however, rather than seeing “thanksgiving sacrifice” – i.e., a literal lamb that you sacrifice in order to say thanks (shudder) – I read it that the actual thanks itself was the sacrifice. While a dictionary definition of sacrifice is “to slaughter an animal or person as an offering to a god,” from the Latin, the etymology of sacrifice is to make (facio) holy (sacer). What happens when I consider giving thanks a sacred act – whether to your god of choice, or in a gratitude journal, or to a person, or in meditation, or whatever? When I offer thankfulness up as a sacrifice? It gets a little twisty if you think about it too hard, but if you dial out the focus a bit and let it get fuzzy, I find it an interesting concept. Anyway. Back to work! Just a lil’ meditation for your Wednesday morning!