Reality Show
Luke 9:24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.
Ok, the ultimate reality show- To Lose A Life- where everybody, the world over, is playing and the winners are only the ones who successfully lose their life. Maybe a bit like ‘The Truman Show’, where Jim Carry’s character is born into a controlled environment in which he is watched by the world from birth and through all the significant events of his life. Although his life is livable, he never really discovers who he really is until he loses that old life. He gets in a boat to somehow depart from his old life and, to the point of perishing in a manufactured storm, is more willing to die than to continue without knowing whom he really is. Although he was living what many might consider to be an acceptable life, he couldn’t ever really win until he lost that life.
From the time we enter the world there is an environment around us that can define and confine us. Although the whole world isn’t necessarily watching on television, they are watching with every encounter, as the person we present to them is one that has been formed by the influence of family, friends and society. What they see may be suitable and livable. It also may be something that is shameful and with little reason for acceptance. Either way, there is a reality show for every living person that only allows progress to the next round of progress and fulfillment in the loss of life. The infant moves from milk-only to an unending menu of food consumption. He/she then moves from the comfort of all-four-on-the-floor to standing upright and moving with much more agility and speed. There’s the first day at school, where the comforts of home are left for an environment of intellectual and social discovery. With maturity, the home is again left along with its sense of entitlement and protection for the world of independently discovering an occupation, an abode, and relationships.
There is for everyone a discovery waiting for the one who will resolutely set sail for that place completely beyond the shores of this life’s contrived culture. While there is a wonderful introduction to the Lord of that new realm, to really make it to the revelation of who we are in Him, it will require braving a life-threatening storm with an attitude of, “I’ll let that old man die in order to really find out who I am in Him”. Every time that old life is lost, however, there is a victory won in the reality show of ‘To Lose A Life’, and Christ’s life is presented to the world in a vessel that has become available to Him. Where He is seen there is then an opportunity for another one to realize that this life on earth isn’t all there is. There’s something of great significance waiting beyond this old life. In Him, the old passes a way and all things are new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)