EVERY morning, when a person rises, this choice awaits: How will I live my life today?
You can rise to make a PRESENCE — that is, to maintain a good front, impress others, and meet their expectations. Basically, living by presence is tiresome, especially when life becomes a constant effort to please people.
Or you can rise and live for life’s true ESSENCE —that is, to live life for what matters most, for what lasts beyond this temporal realm. Basically, it is finding for yourself the truest essence of life as the Creator intended you to have.
Presence asks, “How do people see me?” Essence asks, “What is my life really for?”
Consider Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31). The rich man lived in luxury, dressed in fine clothes, and feasted daily. At his gate lay Lazarus, a poor and suffering man longing for scraps from the rich man’s table. One had abundance; the other had almost nothing.
Then came the day when both faced life’s unavoidable reality: death. They both died. When the CURTAIN FINALLY FALLS
Death immediately erased the difference between their status in life. Wealth lost its value. Social standing becomes worthless. Earthly comfort comes to an abrupt end. The divergence of their eternal destiny becomes their new absolute reality.
Jesus revealed that after death their paths diverge radically:
* The rich man who lived for presence dies in profound spiritual destitution. Having invested his entire existence into temporal comfort, he finds himself stripped of hope. His soul in extreme turmoil faced an empty-handed eternity.
* The poor man, Lazarus, who lived for essence was cared and carried by angels to a place of comfort, rest and peace. His portion was vindicated by a God who looks past outward appearances and knows the stirrings in every man’s soul.
The rich man who once lived with much lost everything, while Lazarus who once lived with nothing now finds an abundance of everything.
That is the solemn warning of this story, which can also be your own story. Yes, your life may be good, but death awaits everyone, no matter how long it takes. And the story that matters most is what comes after a person breathes their last.
WHAT MATTERS MOST
You can spend your years building a name, earning titles, achieving success and impressing others, only to discover that none of these can answer the deepest question of the soul. What the world counts as gain may actually mean nothing – and worthless – in eternity.
Jesus asked: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). No person escapes this divine scrutiny – not since, not now, not ever.
To live for presence is to pursue what the world values. To live for essence is to guard what matters eternally: the soul.
The real question to ponder is what do you live for? Is it to make a worldly presence or to live for life’s truest essence?
BLESSINGS OF ESSENCE BEFORE PRESENCE
One day, a person’s presence will be gone, and everything valued in this life will be left behind. The applause will fade; achievements will be a forgotten history as the world moves on.
Perhaps that is why you should not live pridefully to be remembered only for what you have become, but rather, to make your life be remembered humbly for what it gives back to God.
Rather than chasing what impresses people, choose a path that blesses people and honors God.
Presence is temporary and fades away quickly, but pursuing life’s essence carries priceless significance that can never be lost from here to eternity.
Frankly now, your presence without the essence is a worthless existence. So let this now be your new mantra in life: Essence than presence.
Henceforth, when you rise up tomorrow, pause first and ask yourself: Should I live again only to make a presence — or should I live now to fulfill my life’s truest essence?
The choice will always be yours, and yours alone. The consequences too of your choices, like that clueless rich man, will also be yours, and yours forevermore, and yes, at your own risk.
“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)/PN
