Where is Your Treasure?

I am blessed to have wonderful neighbors who have helped me and watched out for me in the past three years.  I will be forever grateful for their care and willingness to assist me in any number of ways; mowing my grass, repositioning my mailbox after the snowplow put it in the ditch; taking my yard waste each week to the road at the end of my 400’ driveway; showing me where the timer to the barn is located; giving me good suggestions on what to do in an emergency; just keeping an eye-out for me.  You get the idea!

My husband was a pack-rat and he loved thrift stores and garage sales.  That is a risky combination!  I have decided now that I need to clean out our barn which is filled to the brim with all manner of “treasures”; I don’t even know the name of some things!  Frank was an electrician by profession and he had a brother who was also an electrician.  That being said, he had rolls of wire, boxes of old metal electrical outlet boxes (now they are plastic), switch plate covers, boxes of old circuit breakers, wire caps of all sizes, old fuses, etc. and etc.  In addition, there was a large attic fan he was going to install “someday”, hanging light fixtures, a disco mirror ball, old doors and screens, garden flower pots, ladders, an old table saw, a small metal wagon suitable for using behind a riding mower and even a walker with a discarded snake skin attached!  There are rusty tools and garden shovels, pipe benders, well used lawn ornaments, old hoses, sprinklers, a picture of soldiers in Vietnam (Frank was a Vietnam vet); two metal foot lockers.  (Those, actually, are mine from college days and I might try to sell those.)  There are three assorted golf clubs in one corner along with an old bicycle.  Hanging on the ceiling are two antique “harp” chairs that I will also try to sell.  I made the comment to the neighbors that “the barn was kind of an embarrassment to me” but they all said, “No, there‘s lots of good stuff in here!”  Well, I guess so.

So before I call 1-800-GOT-JUNK, I let the guys into the barn last week.  I told them that they could just take anything they can use before I clean it out.  I chuckled to myself since they were as excited as kids in a toy store!  Each one spent a couple of hours looking through boxes and totes, making a pile of their take-home treasures.  One friend commented to me when finished, that going through old stuff like this, was, to him, the ideal way to spend a Saturday!  It was a real live “American Pickers” show being played out! I am delighted that some of Frank’s things found a new home.

This whole experience made me think of the scripture verse in Matthew 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust (and mice) do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.   Of course there is nothing wrong with accumulating useful things and especially if you don’t make them a priority in your life.  The thing is we can’t take our stuff with us when we die.  (Well, I have heard of people being buried in their Cadillac or on their Harley bike, but that is an exception.)  The only things we take with us are the things we’ve accumulated for righteous living.  It’s the good deeds, the uplifting words, the acts of kindness and integrity, love we’ve shown to others that matter.  Paul wrote in Colossians 2:3 to the Christians in Laodicea, “My purpose (in writing) is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the  full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”.  In Hebrews 11:26, Moses “regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt because he was looking ahead to his reward”. Corrie ten Boom said “Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open”. 

Dear Lord, help me to treasure doing Your good work and the storing up for myself the riches of Heaven.