How Much for Your Life?

By Peter Lundell –

What would it be like to grow up without a father and your mother in jail—knowing that when you were a baby, your mother murdered her friend over twenty dollars your mom borrowed to buy you Pampers but used the money for something else?

There will soon be a boy like that. Recently in Brooklyn two young ladies ranted at each other for a few days on Facebook over twenty dollars that the teen mom borrowed and used for something other than the Pampers she said she needed it for. The one who lent the money confronted the mom, and the mom stabbed her. The one killed had just finished college and planned to go to law school. Dead in a dispute over twenty bucks.

Only now does the accused realize the absurdity of what she did. But she cannot escape the consequences.

Most people would need much higher stakes before they’d throw their lives away. But they’ll still throw them away. If the stakes were twenty million dollars rather than twenty, wouldn’t a lot of people fight or kill and risk their lives, even their souls? From God’s perspective, might that not be absurd as well? To God, would twenty dollars really be that different from twenty million? Money has no value in eternity (though we can give and use it wisely to gain a better eternity).

It could be said that from God’s perspective, anyone who chases after anything material and sacrifices his or her life in the process is ultimately committing an act of absurdity. Jesus had plenty to say about that.

Though we gasp at the absurdity of being killed over twenty dollars, from God’s perspective losing ourselves over any amount or anything in this world would be absurd. Don’t get lost!

PRAYER: Lord, knowing You is important above all else. May I never forget. And let me never give in to an opportunity, however great, that would tempt me to sell my soul.

“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36 NIV).