Question?

Which is harder, to die for someone or to live for them?

By being willing to die for someone you are willing to make the 'ultimate' sacrifice, once for all, what you offer you cannot offer again. That being said, if you go through with that sacrifice, you no longer have the ability or need to make the same sacrifice again. You cease to be part of the equation.

By choosing to live for someone; not in some cheesy, emotionally unhealthy way, but by choosing to sacrifice self, day in day out, for the sake or in honor of another, that becomes a completely different kind of cost.

We speak of 'laying down our lives', for others, for country, for...whatever. What does it really mean? And how much does it really cost? And do any of us, really, have a clue?

What does it look like to put other people's good, corporately or individually, ahead of considerations for ourselves?

I don't want to get too deep into this and I don't want to preach, but it struck me today that the accountability and responsibility involved in living consciously for or because of someone else, is even greater that 'just' dying for someone. We hear the Bible verse 'greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for another', but I don't think we realize that the 'laying down' isn't about dying physically, but rather the dying of self that's involved when we choose to live for something other than our selves.