“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” so said Jesus two thousand years ago. What good is it to have everything this world has to offer, and yet in the end lose everything, your very self included?

This month the Forbes Rich List came out again, listing off the richest people in the world. I don’t know any of them personally, though I have bought the odd item from Jeff Bezos, and I think Mark Zuckerberg owns most of my digital photos!

I don’t know the state of their souls, but I know plenty of people who are playing the game ‘the-one-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins’. Is that what life is about? I think most of us would say no- but if it’s not about that then what is it about? Family? Self-fulfilment? Shoes? Does life have any meaning? Can we just make up our own purpose in life and pursue it? 

Well, we’re free to live for those things; we’re free to live for whatever we want. But we run the risk of making the same mistake Jesus talks about, living for something that in the end gets us nowhere. Like a footballer who spends the two halves playing keepy-uppy whenever they get the ball, when the point of the game is to score goals. It may keep them happy and amused for a while (a good thing), but in the end they lose the game (a not so good thing). How can we know the point of life though? Surely, we have to go to the one who came up with it in the first place? If there is a God then wouldn’t they know what life was all about?

Jesus, just before he said about gaining the whole world, said that we are to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. For Jesus that is our big purpose. That is how we don’t forfeit our souls. We can’t take up our cross in the same way Jesus did. He literally took up his cross and paid for the sins of the world. But we can pour ourselves out in the service of others. Not to earn our way to Heaven (if we could do that then Jesus wouldn’t have had to die in the way he did). No, instead trusting in what Jesus did at Eastertime we can live lives of meaning and purpose; that’s what it means to follow him. And that’s a life that we won’t lose in the end.

One day Amazon’s warehouses will be empty relics. One day Facebook will be a distant memory (like Myspace!) But a life lived for Jesus will go on forever.