Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

Seeking The Wrong Things

Philip, king of Macedon, as he was wrestling at the Olympic games, fell down in the sand; and when he rose again, observing the print of his body in the sand, cried out, “O how little a parcel of earth will hold us, when we are dead, who are ambitiously seeking after the whole world while we are living.” The human frame does not occupy a significant amount of space in the grand scheme of things. Death reminds us how little value there is in the pursuits of life because there is nothing taken and everything left behind. A cemetery plot typically measures approximately 24 square feet, with varying depths. Some monuments are larger than the burial plot containing the little parcel of human remains. The point is clear – King Philip was right.

There is a misguided desire to pursue a world that can never be gained. If a man gained all the wealth in the world, what value would there be? Does wealth bring happiness and satisfaction? There is value in being as healthy as a person can be, but stopping death is impossible. Healthy people die. If a man gained as much wisdom as possible in a lifetime, he would die ignorant of so much more. The human mind is limited in what it can contain and process in a lifetime. Pleasure is the joy of life and is found more often in youth than in older age. The human body can be transformed into a living sculpture of beauty, only to fade with the approaching ravages of time. Everybody grows old, and everyone dies.

What man has failed to appreciate is that he is an eternal creature that will never cease to exist. The human body is a tent to be folded up one day and returned to the dust from whence it came. What will not cease to exist is the spiritual nature of man that God created on the sixth day. When God said He wanted to make man in His image, He made man in the image of an eternal creature that had a beginning but no end. Abel was the son of Adam and Eve. He is the first man to die (according to the Bible), and while his death was thousands of years ago, he still exists. Jesus calls Abel a righteous man. Angels carried Abel to Paradise. All the people on planet Earth who died in the flood still exist, as does Noah.

The human frame occupies little space as an imprint on the ground because God is trying to remind His creation of how small they are and how great He is. In that comparison, the Divine declares His love for that small creature He created. He sent His only Begotten Son to die for that small creature. God also gave us a book to learn who we are and why we were created. Reading the Bible helps us see how important we are to Him. Seek God and He will reward you. Learn how important you are in the eyes of the Lord God who made you. In this vast universe wherein we dwell as small particles of dust on an expanding canvas of darkness, God loved us enough to give His Son to die for us. He gave us light. That is the true worth of life.