Abraham and Isaac

God blessed Abraham with silver, gold, and cattle because Abraham feared God, worshiped Him, and obeyed His commandments. He also promised to give Abraham's family an abundance and gave Abraham and his wife a child, Issac, which was a huge blessing to them. In order to test Abraham's devotion to Him, God told him to sacrifice his only son Isaac on Mount Moriah. Abraham was confused by this requested, but traveled up the mountain, built the altar, and was about ready to sacrifice his son. Then, God told Abraham that he did not have to do this, and a ram was sacrificed instead. This story is a parallel to God giving up his only son Jesus, but Isaac was allowed to live.

(http://endoftheage.blogspot.com/2011/12/metatron.html) This is a picture of Abraham preparing to kill his only son in a sacrifice to God.

True sacrifice is something incredibly rare in our society. There are acts of extreme generosity, but not many instances of giving up something for the sole purpose of helping someone else. Giving up time to help feed the homeless seems to be a true sacrifice of time, but the volunteers feel personal gratification from doing this and it is not completely selfless. However, this does not mean it is wrong to help others and feel gratified; helping others is always beneficial (and it can be to both sides). It's like a mutualistic relationship we learn about in Biology class. A true sacrifice means that there is nothing in it for the one who does the sacrifice, so the most obvious one is that they die to save somebody else. They feel no personal satisfaction after the fact because they are dead, but their actions let other people live longer and fuller lives.