What precisely are money and achievements worth?  It's an age old question.  Most of us will say that, well, money is useful, and, clearly, achievements indicate that we have made the most of our short lives on earth.  Most of us would also say, however, that, in the big picture, neither money nor achievement are worth sacrificing everything else in our lives to gain.  Some things, some largely intangible things are, for most of us, more valuable than either.
     On the other hand, given that we in the West live in thoroughgoing capitalistic societies, we often find resisting the impulse to elevate money and achievement above all else difficult, if not impossible to do.  Given the choice, most of us would rather have money than not and, given the choice, most of us would rather live a life that we consider to be full--of activity and accomplishment--than empty.
     And we are not wrong to do so.  We are incredible creatures, endowed with incredible gifts, and we ought to, for the sake of ourselves, our family, our fellow human beings, and the God from whom these gifts come to exercise and express them to the fullest and, if doing so proves financially renumerative, be grateful, very grateful.  We ought to seek to live, as an annual December edition of The New York Times Magazine would have it, "a life well lived."
     But what does a well lived life really mean?  The first chapter of Ecclesiastes tells us that, in the end, all is futility, and that there is really nothing new under the sun.  Other chapters state that regardless of how much we accumulate or how much we do in this earthly existence, when we die, we no longer have control over it, no longer derive any benefit from it.  Our memory may endure, but we are not there to know it.
     So what is the point of anything?  Jesus puts it nicely.  After predicting, to his disciples, that despite the transforming teaching and wondrous deeds he is proclaiming and effecting, he will soon die--and then be raised on the third day--Jesus says, "For what will it profit a person if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?"  Precisely:  what really will we gain if we become the richest and most accomplished person in the world yet lose, shorn of starting and ending point, who we are?
     Or worse, forget why we're even (or have been) here.