The bloated blood-thirsty bug buzzed by my ear during my first conscience moments. His was a fatal mistake. As I sat up to notice the sun beginning to send it’s first shoots across the sky and illumine our room my eyes began to focus, and my brain began to process. My wife and infant daughter lay next to me in bed, still taking their rest, and unaware of the day. This was a new day with all of it’s projects, tasks, joys, and work! Although there were many things on the list, the first was to take care of that terrible mosquito before he could wreak any more itchy welts on my family. The job was over quickly, for the fat fly had filled himself too much to move quickly, and was therefore easy prey. 

What if they mosquito had the capacity to understand that if he were to insert himself inside our mosquito net for a night of gorging it would almost certainly mean death? If an insect could know such a thing, would he still find it worth it? Is a night of feasting on your favorite food a sufficient reward for the price of your life? Of course not. Any animal would have enough sense to preserve it’s life over the pleasure of a little food, right?

How many people, however, are doing the same thing? How many million souls around the world have heard the good news, or have an inkling of the one who created all of this and yet they pay no attention. Untold numbers, just like this mosquito, opt for a night of feasting at the price of their life. Perhaps they think that in the end they will escape. Perhaps that they think that the end of life on earth is the end of existence, as it is for the mosquito. 

The vapor of life slips silently through their fingers as they marvel at the vanities before them, little knowing that when the fair is over and the music stops the lights will go out. Then, finally, they will mourn and weep for the wasteful way that they spent their minutes in shallow and temporal pleasure. 

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. 

repost from 2012