Loss

"More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ..."
-Philippians 3:8
      Some of you may already know, but recently I lost my grandfather. Today I attended his funeral with my family. This is the second funeral I have attended (that I can remember), the first being my grandmother's. My father and his siblings especially were distraught in this time because they had lost their father who had loved them so much. There were also many other people who knew my grandfather from various things, like church or folk dancing. This was a sad time for me as well because my grandfather was the only grandparent I really knew at all. My mother's parents died before I was even born, and my grandmother had Alzheimer's disease so I only ever really saw her in a nursing home.  
      No matter how prepared you may think you are to lose a loved one, you never are. My family all knew that my grandfather was sick and close to death, but his death still brought much sorrow. It's hard to lose something that you hold dear to yourself, especially when it's someone who has loved you as best as they could. However, nothing you do can stop someone from dying, because everyone dies eventually. This is just an unfortunate reality of life.
      The good news is that there are many things in life that we can choose to give up. Often we don't want to give things up, but that's because we don't see the point. We think that losing these things we hold dear will make us feel upset and leave an emptiness in our heart. The reason we have this mindset is because we aren't looking at what we can gain from giving certain things up. If I offered you a million dollars and all you had to do was give me your shoes, you would not hesitate to give them up. This is a humorous example, but the point remains the same. We can choose to give things up and gain something worth so much more.
      God is offering us a chance to live a blessed life, if we would just choose to give up certain things. God is asking us to give up our plans, our desires, our pride, and to simply trust in Him. The trade off is that we get to know the "surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus". Paul understood that he would have to suffer the loss of everything he had, but knowing Christ was worth the cost. Compared to knowing Christ, Paul considered everything he had to be worthless, even "rubbish". If we could just see the greatness of Christ, nothing would hold us back.
-Smart