Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matt 10:39The spring sun warmed the soil after a rain-shower. Moisture seeped into the husk of a domant seed. Within hours, a graceful pale-green stock pushed through rich loam. His delicate whiskers twitching, a young mole sniffed along the ground in the night. His pink eraser-of-a-nose came upon the newborn plant and he chomped it off. A misty sun rose to find the mole still nibbling tender shoots. In mid-bite, a hawk snapped him into steely talons. She flew her prey toward a nest of downy eyas frantic with hunger. However, in her absence, a falconer collected the chicks to train for professional hunting. He whisked them into the city where his freckled son belted out, “I get the big one, I get the big one.”
It would seem for every creature including man that “the full exertion of all their faculties and all their energies is required to preserve their own existence and provide for that of their infant offspring” (A. R. Wallace). It is the way of the food chain. Then Jesus invites us to step out of nature and forgo the struggle for physical life. He asks us to trade up to spiritual life. This tests our utmost limits. Everything we know, everything we see says self-preserve. To lose my life, sacrifice for others, and scorn personal advancement requires something outside my natural self. It requires I be more than animal; I must be spirit in composition. What is more, my spirit must be infused with the Holy Spirit or I will never get past mere physical preservation.
So the question at hand is, “Am I of the stuff of heaven?” I pray with all my heart that I am. Yet I intertwine with this earthly existence until there is indeed a struggle for real life. It is a struggle that seeks to extend the food chain one-step beyond the human organism at the top. The true culmination is where, by grace, my flesh succumbs to my spirit.
Prayer: Oh, Lord Jesus, help me lose my life that I might gain spiritual life in You.
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