"Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it." Luke 9:24

Jesus' words are frightening. Who doesn't want to save his own life? The emotionally disturded, perhaps, but the rest of us hang on to it with a passion. We try to build it up and establish it with our reputations, our careers, our enjoyments, our families, our friends, our accomplishments--anything we can think of, really.

We begin life with an emptiness that needs to be filled--or, more accurately, that demands to be filled. From childhood forword, we seek fulfillment in whatever will temporarily satisfy that emptiness. And that's the problem; we seek fulfillment with unworthly things. Sometimes those things are good and noble, other times not. Either way, they are not the eternal fulfillment God wants us to have. They will eventually destroy us.