Dear Friends,

There are those who say, “I’m just too busy to take time to know God.” Is that really wise? Today’s devotional show you how foolish it is. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,

John Janney

• Mark 8:36

  Mark 8:36   English Standard Version (ESV)

  ³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Mark 8:36

“I heard, some time ago, of one who, when anyone spoke to him about religion, always used to reply, ‘You see, I am so very busy that I cannot attend to it.’ It happened, one morning, that he saw in the paper that a follow tradesman had suddenly died; and, as he read the paragraph, he said to his wife, ‘I don’t know how old So-and-so found time to die; I have such a deal to do that I could not afford time to die.’ He staggered as he went out of the room, and fell across the threshold dead within five minutes after having uttered that wicked speech…. You may fancy that you are too busy to think of the affairs of your soul; yet you may be taken away, upon a sudden, from the midst of your occupations, and then what will those gains benefit you? It may be printed, in The Illustrated London News, that you died worth so many thousands of pounds; but will it not be a great falsehood? When a rich man dies, what is he worth? He has, perhaps, a lead coffin, or the undertaker may use more expensive wood than for a poor man, and there is a greater display at the funeral, and very often there is more squabbling with his family over what he has left…. You know how it often is with rich people; the best part of the funeral is when the will is read; and I have more than once heard some such remark as this: — ‘That man was very like a hog, — no good to anybody while he lived, but he will make some fine sides of bacon when he is cut up.’ Is it worth while for a man to fling his soul away merely that he may get so much together that he cannot use, and which will very likely be misused by those who inherit it?”
[Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLIV, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1898), p. 400-401]