They were great men, but Paul says, they were only men. And the church was a lot more than any of them. It was a team of people all working to build a ministry for God, and a church that let God build through them.

Over our lives we face many changes. People retire or lose their jobs and feel dislocated. We move into a new home and feel disoriented. Someone we love, close to us, passes to glory and we feel an emptiness. Our child leaves for college or our parents for Florida and we feel loneliness. While change often leads to blessing, at first, we often feel apprehension and confusion.

A number of years ago a relative of mine was talking to me about what they believed. I said that what they believed wasn’t Christian. They said that was my opinion, you have your Christianity, I have mine. We live in a culture where people just make stuff up and call it truth. Part of our identity as Americans is that we allow people to believe and say anything they want. 

We must lose our lives if we hope to find them. This isn’t a call to physical death, but a call to dying to ourselves - our own concerns, desires, and obsessions - and a promise of life. Life lived fully in this time and a new, physical life in the one to come in glory.

Eternal life… Just the words draw us forward to a time that Revelation says will have no pain, sorrow, death, or struggle. It is one of the keystones of the Christian life. A reward waiting faithfulness and service. But what if we are simply wrong, and when we die, it all ends?

It’s one of the most beautiful sights a person can see. In the midst of the darkness and cold of winter, we wake up after a nighttime snowfall and behold, everything is white!