"The fundamental question for the first half of our pilgrimage is `what is the meaning of my life?' The question for the second half is, 'With the time I have left, how can I make a difference?'"

Life's second question -- "What must we do? With the time I have left, how can I make a difference?"

Sometimes life puts that question to us urgently. The late Arthur Ashe was a world champion tennis player, captain of America's Davis Cup Team, who in the course of heart surgery, contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. As his disease progressed and he was dying, he wrote a wonderful book, Days of Grace.

After his first by-pass surgery and the decision to retire from playing tennis in 1979, Arthur Ashe experienced a sense of uneasiness and restlessness. He reflected:

"How could I be dissatisfied, even subtly, with my life to that point? I had lived a fantasy of a life. But I was dissatisfied. Who knows what force gnaws at us, telling us that our accomplishments, no matter how sensational, are not enough, that we need to do more? I wanted to make a difference, however small, in the world."

Life's second question. Immanuel Kant, speaking out of the dim past, Walter Wink from a modern classroom, and Arthur Ashe, in the middle of an unplanned, unexpected collision with his own mortality. They all sound like a young man who one day came to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?" He'd obviously been thinking about that a lot, too.

As the story is told in scripture, he's a very attractive young man. Jesus looked at him and loved him. He was so earnest, so sincere, so hard working, so purposeful, so successful.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Life's second big question. There's apparently something gnawing at this young person, and who doesn't know what that feels like?

He's got it all: great job, good friends, lots of travel. He has a promising future and a growing portfolio with his broker. But there is this gnawing disease, this middle of the night dissatisfaction. What more must I do?

As the story is told in the bible, Jesus doesn't condemn or even criticize the young man. In fact, he appreciates him. When he tells the young man to follow the religious rules, to keep on keeping on, and the young man assures him that he's already doing that, Jesus prescribes something specific. He tells him something further to do. And what he tells that young man is stunning. "Sell your possessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow me." One modern scholar, commenting on that text, said if you aren't appalled by this message, you have not yet heard it.

The young man, Matthew explains, went away sad because he was wealthy, he had many possessions. He was appalled. I can understand that. I'm appalled too. Who isn't? Sell everything? Give it all away? You and I live in a culture that promises us, and our children, that you can buy life. You can establish happiness and security if you earn enough, have enough, accumulate enough. We live, that is to say, in what is now being called a "consumer culture."

The trouble is, consumer culture does not deliver on its promise to provide happiness, and, in fact, there is a sense in which a consumer culture works to the detriment of those very institutions which can - family, schools, non-profit public organizations, churches, mosques, synagogues. Cornell West, a professor at Harvard, whose fine new book, Race Matters, looks evenly and intelligently at the malaise of racism, poverty, unemployment and the escalating violence in which we find ourselves, in a recent interview said that when a market economy -- which we all now know is in some way necessary -- when a market economy becomes a market culture, mediating institutions that hold us together start to deteriorate. And why not? Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't family and school and church deteriorate if the philosophic, spiritual drive behind the culture is greed or selfishness?

Jesus did not condemn this young man. He had a wonderful opportunity to launch a diatribe against success and its rewards but he did not take the opportunity. He did not condemn the young man's wealth. He apparently loved this young man.

What's wrong with him? Well, he's not free, for starters. He was already in bondage. His inability to sell all means that what he had actually owned him. I'll bet this young man was too busy to enjoy his life. I'll bet this young man had worked so hard to get ahead, he couldn't even remember what "ahead" meant. I'll bet the task of securing what he had and scurrying to keep up with inflation, was so important to him that he had no time left, no love, no passion in life.

And I think that's why he came to Jesus. He was, in fact, engaged in a struggle for his own soul. And for him the prescription was surgical: Let it go -- give it away -- and come follow me.

I think the most reassuring part of this great story is that Jesus' disciples themselves were amazed by what they were hearing, and they asked him, "Then who can be saved?" They weren't wealthy. They had given up about as much as it is possible to give, and yet they knew in their heart of hearts that they still loved what they had.

Arthur Ashe wrote, "I'm glad I have enough money to live comfortably. I decided long ago that, on the whole, I much prefer having money to not having it. On the other hand, I also learned a long time ago what money can and cannot do for me. From what we get we make a living. What we give, however, makes a life."

I found Arthur Ashe's memoir touching because he experienced and wrote about, in a compressed period of months, the human condition. Most of us, thank God, don't have that necessity. And yet, we are not here forever. We have only so many chances to make a difference.

When Arthur Ashe made public announcement of his condition, at first he became angry, depressed; and then, after about three weeks, his anger began to subside and the idea of AIDS and what it meant about the future began to integrate with the rest of his life, and he wrote at that time, "You come to the realization that time is short. These are extraordinary conditions. You have to step up. How much time I had left, I did not know. However, I could not ignore the fact that AIDS, as well as heart disease, was exacting a heavy toll on my body, and I had no time to waste."

And so Arthur Ashe began to speak out on the topic of AIDS: how you get it, how to keep from getting it, and how urgent it is for all of us in this country to understand the terrifying prospect of this epidemic continuing unabated. And Arthur Ashe opened his heart and his resources and established a Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, and an association for African American-Athletes, and an Institute for Urban Health at the State University of New York, and a chair in Pediatric AIDS Research at St. Jude's Hospital, Memphis; and he became more vocal and active politically, protesting U.S. policy on Haitian refugees and once even getting arrested at the White House.

And he wrote, "As I settled into this new stage of life I became increasingly conscious of an exhilaration. I felt pain, but also something like pleasure in responding purposefully, vigorously. I had lost many matches on the tennis court, but I had seldom quit. I was losing, but playing well now: my head was down, my eyes riveted on the ball, I had to be careful but I could not be tentative."

And it seemed to me, reading this graceful book and thinking about what it means to be alive and well, with an opportunity to make a difference, it seemed to me that Arthur Ashe had in fact discovered his answer to life's second question and that you and I might pay careful attention.

At the end of the book, not very long before he died, he wrote, "I am a fortunate man. Aside from AIDS and heart disease, I have no problems."

There are opportunities every day to make a difference. How sad to miss them. It is our deepest trust that our ultimate destiny is in the gracious hands of a loving God.

Life, your capacity to make a difference, to love and work and care, to participate in and to empower, and to support institutions that bring healing and hope to others -- your fulfillment and purpose and even your happiness, all of that is in your hands.

Life's second question. What must I do?