When the stock market crashes and savings evaporate, we see suicides. When people retire and their intellect is no longer respected, depression results. When one's spouse leaves them or dies, many seeing no reason to live any longer die soon afterwards. Everything can slip through our fingers. Everything that is, except our relationship with God, our ability to serve both on earth and in heaven. This is a promise that never goes away.

Throughout Jesus' ministry on earth, He is teaching others to stop thinking like the rest of the world, and to follow His teaching and His Words. From the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5 when Jesus literally flips human reasoning on it's head to His final hours on earth, He continues to teach this. In the Beatitudes, He said in Matthew 5:5, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." In John 13, we see Jesus, empowered with all the power of the universe, on His hands and knees washing the feet of His disciples. We read in John 13:3-5, "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded." Taking this example into a teaching point, we read in 13:12-14, "...Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." Though washing the feet of guests was the job of a slave or servant, Jesus took on this role. He says in 13:34-35, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." He then says in 14:1-3, "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me...And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." He offers this promise to His followers knowing what life on earth would bring them and us. How far might this love and service for others go? Jesus answered this in 15:12-13, "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for His friends."

The choice is really ours. Place our hope and trust in everything the world has to offer, then crumble whenever we lose these things, such as our loved ones, our standing in the eyes of others, our income, our jobs, etc. Or, we can place our trust in Him, and it is impossible to lose what He offers. No one has the ability to take away His promises to us. No one can take away our standing in Christ. No one has the ability to take a way our ability to serve the rest of humanity. No one. There are really only two roads. The wider one offers so much, but all will eventually evaporate, including our lives. The other is the one that Jesus offers. It is completely different than the worldly model. It is difficult at times to keep our eyes on this road. Corrie Ten Boom, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, said, "Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open." This is a choice that everyone must make, it can not be made for them. It is either the world or Jesus.