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Jesus says, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
We have seen a lot of death this past year, and we continue to see a lot more. We have also seen a change in our pattern of life. We have seen frustration with that change, and we have seen that holding on to the old patterns of living has only led to more death.
Just as Jesus tells us in John, if we hold on to what we want, and what we want alone, we will ultimately lose our life. That life is not the life we live here, but the life that we will live with Jesus eternally. However, if we can put aside our desires in life in this world for Jesus’ sake, then we will have that eternal life with Christ Jesus.
It is no coincidence that Jesus follows this sentence by speaking of those who follow Jesus. If we follow Jesus, our lives are no longer just about ourselves, but instead they come to be about God. Yes, that means giving up our own wants and desires, but it means gaining the deep and abiding connection with our Creator, the source of all life and being, forever and forever more.
When we look all around us this past year and everything that has happened in every facet of life, we can see that there are not only dire consequences for the failure to follow our Lord Jesus Christ as we look to the world to come, but there is also a steep price to pay for not following Jesus in our current lives now. If we want to move forward, learn, and come closer to Jesus, we will have to sacrifice our own desires and learn to adjust to new patterns of living.
We don’t want the COVID-19 Pandemic to become like the Spanish Flu Pandemic 100 years ago: something we look back on and say “Oops! Should’ve learned something there.” We also don’t want to create an irreparable wedge between ourselves and God. Listen to Jesus’ words. Put aside your own wants and desires for your own life. Instead, embrace service to our Lord Jesus Christ, even if that takes you into a pattern of life that you don’t want to take on. Serve Jesus and Jesus alone, even if it appears, on the surface, to be more than a little inconvenient.