What would you pay for an extra year of life? According to a recent study by a Harvard health economist, the cost of that extra year of life is just $20,000, which is down from the mid-1990’s cost of $36,000. The economist says that advanced and relatively cheap drugs such as blood pressure medicine is one of the major reasons for the lower cost (World, September 16, 2006).

            Is $20,000 really the price of life? The problem: when do you pay that $20k? It would seem best to pay most of it early. As Eubie Blake, jazz performer and songwriter, who lived to be 100 said, “If I’d known I was gonna live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” What we eat and don’t eat, the exercise we get or don’t get, the things we smoke or don’t smoke, all seem to have such a great impact over time, but we notice little in the short run.

            James said, “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14b). He tells us this in the context of the man who thinks he controls his own life. “Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow” (James 4:13-14a). Perhaps even the man who has $20k to buy another year of life had better take God into his plans! “For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James 4:15-17).

            Length of life is not nearly as important as quality of life—that is, a life that is devoted to Christ, no matter how short, is better than a long life devoted to self. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:25-27).

The Price of a Life

by Bob Prichard

www.oxfordchurchofchrist.com