This comment is from a Wise Elder: Thanks for the personal perspective on your commitment to the body. Commitment to our body is a difficult challenge in light of the "consumer age" we have both inherited and promulgated through our lifestyles. I believe it is vital for us to continue to have an attitude which was in Christ, that we give our selves for each other. I told my wife the other day that I have come to a realization that I am spending my life for my family, my church body and my community. At the end of my life on earth, I wish to be at a place where I have given all that I could give. The corollary is also true, that I should not come to the end of my life having hoarded my gifts, talents and abilities - sound familiar to any of Jesus teaching? The giving of myself should not come as a result of my need to prove myself, vindicate my self-worth or otherwise engage in self-promotion, but my giving should come from a place of following HIS leading to give where HE directs me and trust that the results of my giving will actually point others toward Jesus and the FATHER (Matt 5:16). There is a danger to "let my light shine" so that people can receive the privilege of being blessed by MY gifts and talents - akin to what some have attributed to the British philosophy of colonial expansion and we all know what resulted in the hearts and minds of the nations which received that "blessing". So, in conclusion, I firmly believe that it is in humility that we are called to follow the leading of the Spirit as seek to bloom where we have been planted. To seek to uproot ourselves and find a sunnier patch of earth to flourish in is a traumatizing scenario. My own feeling after a few years as a Christian is that it seems we have forgotten that God is God and I am not - "sweet revelation". For me it is the height of folly to think I can plant myself. Of course this is not to say that the Master Gardener (Jesus' description of the Father) does not direct HIS people to move and be replanted where HE wills. The key being HIS will and not mine.