It was 7:30 Friday morning, and the city was beginning to wake and stir and prepare for another day of business as usual. Buses discharged their passengers at office and shop, cars and drivers passed on in search of parking spaces, workers paused for a moment before punching time clocks and starting the day's work.
Outside the Healthplan offices two women stood talking. A young man walked up to them and asked for directions to the Boulevard. As they explained, he suddenly grabbed a pocketbook and bolted.
Screams! Yells! "Catch that guy!"
Jake Geathers, driving past on his way to work at the United Parcel Service heard the cries, saw the purse-snatcher, and jumped from his car. Racing after the fleeing man for three blocks, he was stopped abruptly by the seawall on the river. The thief hesitated briefly, then dived into the murky water. Still clutching the purse, he tried to tread water.
Geathers shouted at him, asking if he could swim, but there was no response. He said later, "He just looked at me with fright on his face, and went under."
Once the man bobbed to the surface and yelled for help, then sank again.
Geathers tore off his shirt and tie and jumped in, but the water was too dark, the current too strong, and the man was swept to his death.
"He wouldn't let go of the purse. He just wouldn't let go. He lost his life for nothing, man!" And the tears came into Geather's eyes as he added, "Why didn't he just let go of the purse?"
There was thirty dollars in the purse.
For thirty dollars he sold his life, if not his immortal soul—thirty dollars that did him no good whatsoever.
Can you hear the echo from two thousand years ago? For thirty pieces of silver, Judas Iscariot sold his soul and threw away his life—thirty pieces of silver that he neither spent nor enjoyed. He took them back to the temple and threw them at the feet of the priests before he went out and killed himself.
"He makes an awful bargain who sells Christ and his own soul at the same time!" But men have sold their souls for far less than thirty pieces of silver—or thirty dollars—or even thirty cents. Men—women even children today are selling their souls for drugs or drink or the "pleasures of sin for a season"—and a dreadful bargain they are making with the devil.
What are they gaining in return? Little enough in this life, but oh, the afterward! Short or long, life ends on this earth, but the soul does not die. It will exist forever, shut out from life, and light, and love, for all eternity. God is light, and away from Him there will be only the blackness of darkness—forever! Thirty million dollars—thirty billion dollars—would be a poor exchange.