“What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”
How often have we heard this phrase, in one form or another? Countless times. It rings true at the time, but then Monday morning comes. I am back at work, sliding into the familiar routine, and it is easy to lose sight of the eternal perspective of the choices made throughout everyday life.
But this friction is crucial to us as followers of Christ. It is so important that St. Paul reiterates it in his letter to the Romans, warning against “conforming yourselves to this age.” At the heart of it, that conformity is exactly what causes me so much internal restlessness. We are living on earth in time as we experience it, yet we are called to orient ourselves toward a Life entirely outside of this linear progression.
Put simply, there are no scales to balance. We speak of the “work-life balance” or balancing life’s demands with our spiritual lives, but that is a false premise. How do you balance the sun against a lightbulb?
This is why Faith cannot merely be a weekend refuge; it must be the foundation of our daily choices, underlying everything that we do. If we lose that anchor, we are not simply blown away by the prevailing winds of the age, we are quietly absorbed. We begin measuring our worth by our productivity and our legacy by our resumes. But to choose that which is “good and pleasing and perfect” is to realize that Monday morning is not a departure from the spiritual life, but the very forge where it is tested. The restlessness I feel at my desk is not a distraction to be managed, rather it is the compass pointing home, reminding us that we were built for the warmth of the sun, not the artificial glow of the bulb.