Giving Ourselves Over

Amy L. Dalton
Published 02 December 2025

The Call on Giving Tuesday and every day

Most of us will be flooded today with challenges to give funds to support the many facets of loving resistance that are being cultivated now. The times are such that we should all give as much as we can in as many ways as we can to all the organizations and efforts we care about. I do hope that you will count CLBSJ as one of your priority projects and donate to help us make our year-end goal. AND, I also feel that right now it is extremely important to remember and remind each other that a faithful reading of the Bible as well as of these times discloses that there is something much deeper than money, or time, or talent that we are being asked to give.

As Jesus puts it:

“If anyone wants to come after me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit a person to gain the whole world, yet lose or forfeit their very self?”
~ Luke 9.23-25, Berean Standard Bible with refinements

The sort of giving that Spirit is asking of us now goes way beyond generosity with our time, talent and treasure. It is a call to give over our very definitions of our selves – and insodoing allow ourselves to become an instrument in a common project of justice and repair that is as old as time, and yet is new every morning.

It may be easy to say, but to actually do it is not easy. This is why in Luke’s beloved verse, the words themselves are slippery, full of contradictions — as are even our best efforts.

Where have you heard this message of late – the message to lay down our lives and give ourselves over to the Great Work? I was blessed to encounter it recently in an audacious review of James W. Douglass’s new book, Martyrs to the Unspeakable, submitted by Wes Howard-Brook. Click here to read Wes’s review.

I’m also reminded of a song which, while not reflecting directly on the scripture, for me is contains a lucid “midrash” on this passage: “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, and especially the touchingly raw cover by Johnny Cash, presents the confession of a person who has suffered greatly, and has also caused great suffering. After laying down all the posturing that pretends either is not the case, the song finds new and different energy at the end:

If I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself –
I would find a way.

Thusly an anguished testimony ends on an unexpected note of hope – we feel, surprisingly, that the singer will find a way, and so will we. As I listen, I am reminded that I do believe and know that there is a way, and that it can be found in THIS life. The Bible teaches me that it is a way paved with justice, mercy and humility (Micah 6:8). Along the path, we can help each other excavate and magnify “our very selves.” To walk it, we have to give these very selves over.

So on this Giving Tuesday, and through the final weeks of 2025, CLBSJ invites you to this deep form of giving. And, if the Spirit allows them to align, we invite you also to two more modest forms:

Please consider offering whatever monetary donations you can spare to help our tiny but mighty organization continue to propagate readings and teachings that draw out and mark this path of embodied justice. If you are wondering if your gift will matter, let me tell you that it will! All of our work is funded by the humble generosity of committed individuals. Make your gift and help us reach our end-of-year fundraising goal at clbsj.org/donate
Please share where you have found and are finding words that, albeit with fear, trembling, and contradictions, help point your soul forward on this path. Learn more about our audacious reading invitation at clbsj.org/news/reading-audaciously and submit your reviews and reflections to info@clbsj.org

Thank you for reading this reflection, and for all the ways that you give to the Great Work of justice!

~ Amy L. Dalton
Executive Director
Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice