Saving Things

Once again we are given what seems like a riddle: "...those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." What can this mean? When we save something we keep it for our own use. We don't give it away. We protect it. Some of us end up saving everything we can until we don't have room for any more stuff in our homes.

For some reason, we're afraid to get rid of things we don't even need. In some cases, we save so many things that we actually lose them because we can't find what we want. We just have too much stuff, and when we need some particular item, we can't find that one thing because it is lost among so many other things. Trying to save things, we lose them.

Saving People

Some of us save people the way we save things. We attach ourselves to so many people that we end up belonging to no one We think that the more friends we have, the more important or successful we are. The end result is that we don't really have any close friends or any real friends at all. We have many people we know by name, but not many people who really know us in a deep or satisfying way. Trying to save people, we lose them.

Saving Ideas

Even in the realm of ideas, we know that the person who saves or holds onto his or her ideas and refuses to be open to new thoughts, often ends up possessing half truths. They canonize their own thoughts as the only ones worthy of them and so lose out on the bigger and more life-giving picture which new ideas can bring into one's life. A person who insists that the only thoughts they want to consider are the ones they already have loses out on so much.

Their view of the world is so narrow that they try to imprison other people's thoughts so that nothing new is allowed to be discussed. In this way they effectively prevent any creative ideas from being introduced into a situation where newness could be a saving grace. And so they end up losing new and life-giving ideas because they try so hard to save only their own hardened and narrow ones.

Losing And Saving

And so by trying to hang onto things, people, ideas, we often end up really losing them. When we do this kind of thing, we are closing ourselves off from the world. We are, in a sense, trying to save our lives, just the very thing that Jesus warned us against. What then are some ways in which we lose our lives so that, in the end they can actually be saved?

Let's use the same three examples—things, people, and ideas. The common problem we noted above was that of attachment. When we tie ourselves so firmly to having so much stuff, collecting people like they were objects and holding onto our ideas as if they were gold bars, then we end up losing so much in life.

Hanging on to things, people and ideas as if they were gods is the quick path to isolation and even depression in some cases. Jesus wants us to be freed from anything that locks us up and prevents us from really living life as we are meant to live it. That familiar expression about "letting go and letting God," contains a lot of wisdom. The only way we can come to freedom is to let go of everything which ties us down with invisible chains.

Jesus and the Cross

Jesus had to let go of his entire life in order to save us. In the eyes of those who saw him die, Jesus lost everything that could be lost. And yet we now know that his letting go was the very path he needed to take in order to bring life to the world. And today he tells us that we too must let go. "Take up your cross daily and follow me".

"To be a follower of the Crucified Christ means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss....The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact. It is not by any means an easy thing to recognize, within a given instance of personal loss, the opportunity it affords for participation in Christ's own loss" (Elizabeth Elliot).

Yes, we gain everything when we are able to let everything go—a difficult task at the best of times, but one that we need to take upon ourselves. As we allow ourselves to be freed from anything that holds us back and ties us down, we will gradually experience the enormous freedom and new life that will come into our lives.