Time for this week’s installment of Five Minute Friday. It certainly creeps up on you … especially when you’re on the road.

Five Minute Friday, of course, is a discipline where independent writers join together to transform thoughts on a specific prompt word from their minds through their fingers onto the screen for five minutes. Then we get together and share our pearls of wisdom {okay, some times they’re swine, but the intention is always good} at our spot on Facebook.

To entice you to check us out, I’ve also been including some of the experiences my fellow writers have shared as chronicled in Five Minute Friday: A Collection of Stories Written in Five Minutes Flat. This week, I’ll include the words contributed by Pamela. I hope her words inspire you to join our writing club.

“I can’t even begin to share what the Five Minute Friday Free Write did for me, during a particularly hard year. With the ‘negative voice’ volume turned down, I was free to LISTEN to the words I should have listened to all along and just WRITE. It was therapeutic, heartfelt and so, so good for the soul. It was amazing how one simple word could stir up so many different emotions, not only for me personally, but the other posts I read as well. I’m forever grateful for a chance to be part of such a great group of ‘God’s Children’.”

There you go. Another voice to listen to. Another reason to join the group.

Now for the task at hand. The prompt is SACRIFICE and the timer has been set, so it is time to GO…

We’ve all done it … make a little “sacrifice” here or there. I know many moms who might have sacrificed  dinner so the little ones could eat — dads maybe not as much. We’ve heard the stories of one partner sacrificing their dreams so the other could complete theirs. My wife, for example, sacrificed a lot so I could wander around the country in pursuit of my career.

And we’ve heard over the years about those who gave their lives in service to their country.

We’ve been taught that sacrifice is  noble. We offer sacrifices to the Lord — especially in pre-Christian days — as a way of giving back.

Of course, there was one sacrifice that tops it all. It wasn’t altruistic. It was an act of love. Jesus came to earth to teach, preach, heal, witness, and build a bridge back to heaven through the ultimate sacrifice — His death for one and all, for you and me. God Himself made the sacrifice by giving us His Son … STOP

… for this ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t have to do it. We didn’t and don’t deserve it. But He did. Because He loves us.

THOUGHT TO REMEMBER: Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. — Robert Louis Stevenson