Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Friday April 18, 2008

Day before yesterday I was sitting around musing about the events of the preceding day with the wild coon, crazy dogs and an overly compassionate wife. The wife of my youth is much like Brigget Bardot in that she loves animals and will tell you in no uncertain terms that all animals including the males should live a quality life. As a formerly oppressed Nordic female she understands how the creatures feel.

Try as I may I cannot think of anything I would have rather been doing when the dogs were warning the entire neighborhood of the impending Wild Coon attack, which thinking caused my quote for today to leap off the page and into my mind and heart. The Bard from Concord's Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau, wrote:

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

Think about this statement. We all know that any money we exchange for goods or services is in fact an outright exchange of the part of our life that we gave to earn the money, this exchange determined by an hourly wage. What you make per hour is the value the marketplace puts upon your life. This should make you think about frivolous purchases. Thoreau's platitude should also get the head oatmeal to boiling about what I call the after price, in other words the cost. I met a man who bragged that he made $10,000 in a matter of minutes in a drug deal. Sounds good from a price perspective, but when the cost is factored in, it was not a good deal at all as he ended up serving 5 years in a prison. The value of his great deal was reduced from a tremendous wage to one less than slaves on a plantation made. And when the none monetary issues are counted, such as loss of certain privileges, loss of reputation, banned from several occupations for life and while working 7200 hours at a rate of $5.25 per 120 hours worked plus the loss of his wife and two children, the fast $10,000 minus the above loss is foolish at best and to repeat the same upon release borders on insanity. As the years roll on the price of life invested for such a paltry amount continues to grow.

The free man from Walden's Pond was on to something.

We should learn to ask prior to entering into any agreement; "What is the cost in real life?" In many cases you will if you are sane conclude your life is worth more than that which is offered.

We are told by James, our Lord's brother, of the brevity and uncertainty of life in James 4:14: "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

Due to the swiftness of life we must learn to use life in ways that matter and not in the mere accumulation of toys. A Pennsylvania Dutch saying has it, "I am too soon old and too late schmart." Perhaps the lady was bitter, but the saying is true and I suggest we learn to put true value on the life the Lord has entrusted to us. Price verses cost. Count it up.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with credit

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