Mark 9:42-50

Mark 9:42-50 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  We've entered hand sanitizer season -- the time of the year when every occasion is marked by the slathering of ourselves with hand sanitizer.  Schools have giant bottles of it at every door, and grocery stores station it by the entrance.  (If you're debating whether or not they really work, here's an interview from the University of Toronto, and here's a link to the CDC's website.)  Hand sanitizer isn't the most charming liquid around, but we like not getting sick more than not covering our hands in it at every possible turn, so we use it.
  In Mark's Gospel, Jesus is talking about how we love and value the Kingdom of God.  He's essentially instructing us to rank our desires, and then to figure out how to get the Kingdom of God to be first in our lives, first in our hearts, and first in our priorities.  Jesus is trying to help us understand how much greater the Kingdom of God is than anything else in our lives, and so our first goal should be to pursue the Kingdom at all cost, because it's far greater, and it's eternal -- so to spend our time pursuing lesser things and missing out on the Kingdom is a tragedy.  It's such a tragedy that Jesus tells people that if their eyes are leading them to sin, and thus away from the Kingdom, it would be better to lose your eyes than to lose the Kingdom.  If a hand drags you farther from Christ, it's better to have one hand and be closer to Christ.  No price is too high to pay for an enduring relationship with God.
  What I love about the Gospel is that God shows us that God is willing to pay the ultimate price for a relationship with us.  God sacrifices Jesus Christ to pay the price for sin so that we might be restored.  We don't have to figure out how to fix the relationship -- God does it for us.  Jesus is urging us to recognize that fact and live like it's the most important thing in the world.