Profitable For Thee

"And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell." The basic definition of profit is the net amount you gain after deducting all of your losses. Jesus assures us that if we choose to follow Him, even if doing so would require us to cut out something as dear to us as our own eye or hand, even with such losses it will still be profitable for us. Taking up our cross and following our Savior will require a lot of pain and a lot of sacrifice and a lot of losses. We will be cast into the deep, fierce winds will conspire against us, and the very jaws of hell will gape open to swallow us. We will tremble because of the pain, and be sick with fear, and plead with our Heavenly Father that we don't have to drink from this particular cup. Nothing will go the way we imagined. Our plans will be ruined. We will look for all the world like the lost, weak, scared little children that we are. But that is not the end. Even though we have plucked out our eye and cut off our hand and carved out our broken heart, this is not the end. We still have this promise: that despite the seeming hugeness of our losses, through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, it will still be profitable for us to follow our Savior. In the end all will be made right. Like Job, after all of our suffering and losses, the Lord will restore to us many more times the sum total of everything that we had lost. It hurts to lose, but however big the loss, in the end we will still be profitable through the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.