Ashes to Fire: Sacrifice of Praise and Prayer

Last night I reflected on a prayer by John Wesley that said, O Lamb of God, in this evening sacrifice of praise and prayer, I offer you a contrite heart.  Give me grace, throughout my whole life,  in every thought, and word, and work to imitate your meekness and humility, through Christ, my Lord, I pray.  Amen.  As I read that prayer, and then the second or third time finally was praying that prayer, the phrase sacrifice of  praise and prayer kept hanging me up.  Wesley offered up a contrite heart.  A contrite heart is a heart of remorse for sins one has committed.   It comes from the Latin and means ground to pieces.  Crushed by guilt would be another way of describing a contrite heart.  Does that describe my heart?  Does it describe yours?  There needs to be times in our lives that we recognize that in the presence of Christ we come up short, or more accurately…come up sinful!  We don’t want to hear that do we? (See 1 John 1).  It may be that what we need to first offer up as a sacrifice is our pride.  Here is the good news; the prayer asks for grace.  Give me grace!  Christ answered that prayer by his own sacrifice.