Mark 7-8: Not a Life Worth Saving

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?  Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?  If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”  - Mark 8:34-38 NIV

I've been thinking a lot about this lately; about the choices we make here based on this life, on what we see surrounding us and how different our choices would be if we saw our final destination.  What do we really gain in the seventy or eighty years we spend on this earth.  From my perspective, more at the end of the spectrum than at the beginning, we gain nothing in the way of material possessions or position that really matters.  You'd think we would be standing on the rooftops, yelling to everyone to stop it:  stop all the fighting, stop all the jockeying for position, stop all the hoarding.  It doesn't matter. Instead we're fighting one way or another to preserve the status quo, to preserve this life that it is impossible to preserve.  If all we're concentrating on is saving our life, we're doomed to losing it.

2010 Post - Mark 7-8:  Who Do You Say I Am