The Meaning of Life

    I have a little black box on my desk that I've had for many years.  I entertained kids with it years ago, and many of them have grown up now and still remember that little black box.  Even now I have one little girl who comes in, sits on my lap, and looks around for the box.  What does it do?  It has a slot on top, and when a penny is placed in that slot, a little motor buzzes, the box shakes a few times, a lid opens very slowly, and a little green hand reaches out for that penny, grabs it, and retreats into the box.

    That's it!  Pure and simple!  It's a money grabbing  little box.  I haven't made any money with it yet, because I furnish the pennies to make it work.  But when I look at that little contraption, I see a lot of people whose lives could be summed up in the same way.   They are money grabbing people who have no other purpose in life.  I often think of a statement from the lips of our Lord.  He said that a man's life "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."

    This is it!  Of what does life consist?  Jesus gives a negative. He says that it is NOT his possessions.  He gives us still another hint when he says that He came that "we might have life, and have it more abundantly."  Whatever life consists of, Jesus said that He came that we might have it.

    Now we can look around us and see many things that we could have had, even if He hadn't come.  We would have had houses, and cars, and boats, and gardens, and a world of things.  His coming had nothing to do with those things, so it seems apparent that the "life" that He's talking about was something that His coming brought into existence.  Could it be that He came that men might have a relationship with the Father that they had never experienced before?  Jesus said, "this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou has sent."  This is what life is really all about.  It isn't just grabbing the things of this world.  It is knowing God.

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