The mysterious “someone” has a name we don’t know and a lot of energy we can’t help but notice: he runs, throws himself on the ground, has interesting questions, dynamic and agile reactions. He spared no effort in keeping the commandments: he has led a blameless life since his youth. Everything out of the box! Everything as if from a box, and yet in the frenetic and perfect and perfectly frenetic, yet one detail somehow gets lost in all of it.

Erm, let’s say a small detail – good God.

When Christ answers our anonymous man’s question about what he should do and what he shouldn’t do when he significantly slows down his activism, the man is surprised by one more challenge: “Go, sell everything you have, give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me!”

The degree of consternation is fulfilled, the man becomes sad and goes to a place whose name we also do not know. This time his step is less cheerful. But is it possible to walk easily with such heavy ropes on the heart? The important thing is not how big the property is, but how big a chain wrapped around my heart connects me to it. That may be the difference between when I own property and when property owns me.

Something inside me tells me, something whispers to me, that the young man should not have just left quietly. He should have discussed it with Christ at least a little. He could throw himself on the ground one more time or throw himself on the ground and rebel. If he had blacked out to Jesus that he had worked for wealth for many years and, as he imagines it, just to tell everything, if he had hurriedly presented arguments to Jesus as to why he could not do such a thing to his relatives, if he had said that he simply could not do it, that he could not leave everything behind, maybe Christ could have something to say about that.

If the master had stayed for a while, maybe he would have heard that leaving everything behind does not mean experiencing emptiness.

Again, something whispers to me that Jesus would have read his heart one more time and would have looked at him lovingly one more time. Could he not give him a helping hand? Perhaps the anonymous gentleman would have learned that if not everything, then today at least something is enough to give away and that even the disciples went through their stages before they could say that they had left everything.

If the master had stayed for a while, maybe he would have heard that leaving everything behind does not mean experiencing emptiness. Perhaps he would have discovered that the problem is not the property, but the attitude towards it, and that the crisis is not caused by his looming financial crisis, but by the loss of security that he actually saw. He would have learned that it is okay to be afraid of uncertainty and to be distrustful.

And so I want to ask you, a precious person who is reading these lines, not to go quietly away, but to try to stay and maybe argue with Christ. People too – while they’re arguing, there’s still something to be saved, but when no one says a word… Tell Christ why you’re rebelling, shout out all your objections to Him.

Maybe it’s not about what your wealth is, but how tight is the string that binds your heart to it. Maybe it’s not what it seems: maybe God isn’t a life-threatening threat, and maybe He doesn’t just maliciously steal what you hold dear.

He may give it to you, and give it to you a hundredfold, but He wants your security to be something other than all good gifts. Maybe he wants your reassurance in all of this to be another tiny – ahem – detail that sometimes gets lost in it all. May the good God be your security.