Not a martyr

By Rebekah Robinson, The Rope Contributor

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Matthew 10:39

I don’t think God called us to be martyrs. He’s already done that, and that life is worth much more than ours. I’m not saying people aren’t supposed to die for others. I’m also not saying that Christians all over the world don’t lose their lives daily for the sake of the gospel. But we are not called to die for the sake of dying, just as we are not called to live for the sake of a self-satisfying life.

Instead, I think this verse is something stranger and more painful and also harder to grasp. We find meaning in our lives in everything besides Jesus. We find satisfaction in our jobs, our money, our family, our success, our status, our cup of whatever-we-feel-like tea. Typing it and saying it out loud all sounds pretty stupid.

Why would I choose anything of this world over Jesus? I know the truth. And yet I choose the dirt, time and time again. Because the world loves dirt. We like to compare our piles of dirt to other piles of dirt. And it’s all futile.

I don’t want to bury myself in the dirt. I don’t want my treasure to be down here, where moths destroy and thieves steal and things break and money runs out and our bodies erode and memories fade. I don’t want a self-comforting life. What’s the point of being comfortable in a world I don’t belong to?

Where is your life? What are you doing? What do you believe? Who do you trust?

I hope when the time comes, when such a common thing as death — because that’s one thing we all have in common — takes me, I’ll be okay with the life I lived.

Lose your life, because your little life really isn’t worth that much. Give your life — all of it, the whole thing — and it will be worth more than you could ever hope. It’s not your life anyway.

Your life is too great a thing to waste on something as small as yourself.

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