Lives need love – things don’t

An old man was once sitting on the beach in front of his shack, catching fish. He lived a simple life and when he needed some money for a few essentials, he would take his fish to the market. A wealthy businessman saw the size of the fish he was catching and asked him why he didn’t sell the fish for a better price. “Why?” he asked.

“After a few months you can buy yourself a little fishing boat and catch more fish.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, you can then buy a few more boats, have people work for you and you can bring in a huge haul of fish everyday,” the businessman replied.

“I still don’t understand what your point is.”

“You can then take all that money, buy yourself a house on the beach and then really enjoy your life – catching fish.”

The old man was dumbfounded by this ridiculous advice. “But that’s exactly what I’m doing now,” he answered.

Let me make it clear that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having ambition and  wanting to achieve things. I have a number of things in the pipeline for 2019 and they are pretty ambitious. The problem comes when we find our identity in our things and our position. Things and positions are temporary, and can be taken away at any stage, but we can’t escape who we are. And if “who we are” is synonymous with what we have, then we have a serious problem.

If we spent as much time building relationships with others as we do looking at screens, this world will be a different place. If we tried to build others up in real life, as much as  we try to portray our lives as perfect on social media, society would be changed from  self-centred to relationship-centred.

One life is so much more precious than every material possession. Jesus was willing to leave behind the 99 to find the 1! He obviously values every person.

Relationships are far more valuable than anything money can buy. Jesus sat around the fire, a meal and a table talking with people who nobody else was interested associating with. He obviously values relationships.

He never allowed himself to be distracted by things, when He had an opportunity to talk to people. Let’s never forget that things were made to be used and people were created to love – don’t get them confused!

Have an awesome day!