I remember about 15 years ago when my wife and I went to buy some land we thought it was somewhat overpriced. When we went to consult a friend of ours, he said, “it seems that way now, but remember, God’s not making anymore of it.”

You hear people in retrospect, lamenting the lost opportunity that presented itself, but they chose to pass on. I can remember when I was little, we loved to go to Myrtle Beach every year. My dad wanted to buy a condo to rent out throughout the year and for us to use from time to time. My mom wasn’t so convinced. “It’s just too much,” she would say. What she didn’t realize was that just 15 short years later, the same condominium was worth three times what they would have paid. Oops!

How are you investing in your life? How are you spending your most valuable commodity? By the way – it’s your time. God tells us that what we reap we sow. What we plant is what gets harvested. Proverbs 14:14 reads, “the faithless will be fully repaid for their ways, and the good people will be rewarded for theirs.”

Repaid or rewarded? Are you seemingly always the one who does the “taking,” or are you willing to “give more than you receive.” In what ways does your generosity of time and talents help the lives of those around you? Or are you looking for the next profitable endeavor, despite how it might affect others?

God wants us to be followers of His Son, faithful to the calling he has on our lives, and to positively touch the lives of others. Sometimes in our society it’s hard. It requires sacrifice on our part. It requires losing some of our life, so that someone else might have more life. But isn’t that exactly what God did for us through Christ Jesus? How are the investments you have made and are making in your life panning out? How do you define profit? What do you count as loss?

My hope is that our efforts of investing in this life, are ones that will profit us toward life-everlasting, only by God’s grace. Love, peace, joy, hope, generosity, patience and so on. You can find a more comprehensive list in your Bible. Perhaps you should invest some time in reading it today!

Tim Beck is pastor of Kenbridge United Methodist Church. His email address is revtimbeck@gmail.com.