Mark 8:35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
For years I’ve wondered what the above verse really means. I think I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of it. I think Jesus as alluding to having the Eternal Perspective. What is the Eternal Perspective? It’s when you understand that the temporal is just a fraction of really life. It’s when you start to prioritize according to what’s important thousands of years from now. Do you have it? I want to have it. We’re temporal beings so it’s impossible for us to really understand eternity, but I think we can understand the importance of it.
It’s hard to keep the Eternal Perspective. It’s not a natural thing. We’re concerned with today and tomorrow. It’s all about what we’ve done in the past and what we want to do in the future. Think about it. The present really doesn’t exist. We’re always in the near future while thinking about the near past. Almost no one wakes up thinking, “Today is my last day on Earth”, but every single one of us will be there at some point.
It’s the Eternal Perspective. Life is a drop of water in the oceans of eternity. Our personal desires, the car we drive, the house we want, the stuff we like. How important is that 1,000 years from now? Ecclesiastes says that life is like a shadow. The book of James says that life is like a vapor. Don’t get me wrong, I like stuff. I really like stuff. But I’m trying to instill in myself that no matter how cool my stuff is, I probably won’t even care about it in 5, 10, or 20 years.
I’m privileged to work in Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan’s Purse. We just finished collecting millions of shoebox gifts. We’re going to send these gifts to millions of children around the world. But, we understand that it’s not about the shoebox. It’s not about clean water, it’s not about feeding programs, it’s not about fighting Ebola. These are tools that pastors around the world can use to open doors for the Gospel. We’re brazenly Jesus.
That’s what I love about Samaritan’s Purse. We have that priority in place. We strive to have the Eternal Perspective.
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