Before Life

Read: Mark 8:34-38

If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. Mark 8:35

IN WORD

It’s perhaps the greatest Kingdom paradox. If we want life, we shouldn’t seek it. We should give it up. Lay it down. Cast ourselves into the soil like seed destined to become something other than seed. We invest ourselves in God and others. We want life, of course, and there’s nothing wrong with that longing. But getting it involves surrendering our desperate search for glory and giving it instead.

That isn’t easy to do. No one instinctively pursues a desperate desire by forsaking it. That just isn’t natural. No, if we want life, our instincts tell us to do everything we can to grab it wherever we can. For many, that results in the relentless pursuit of whatever makes them feel alive—power, sex, romance, entertainment, money, travel, or any other package that promises excitement.

Eyes of faith see through all that. God is looking for those who recognize the difference between what leads to life and what doesn’t. Nothing is wrong with pleasure, excitement, and adventure; those cravings were built into us. But to see the pleasure, excitement, and adventure in Him rather than in superficial gifts . . . that’s faith. And in a very real sense it requires some kind of death before we experience the life He promises.

IN DEED

Knowing the future of His disciples, Jesus is actually hinting at martyrdom in this passage. But the truth applies to much more than physical death. The way to Kingdom life involves forsaking all the self’s strategies and investing in others’ lives. Then, almost apart from our own awareness, we find ourselves receiving the life we once craved. We don’t attain fulfillment, we receive it. When we pour out ourselves, He pours Himself into us. And the death we thought we embraced becomes our means to life.

ADDITIONAL READING: Galatians 2:20

It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

FRANCIS OF ASSISI