Wrong riches

Before I get into this entry I want to say a few words about the inconsistency with which I've updated. I want everyone to know this won't continue. I've been dealing with dial up lately, and it is difficult to access this site, facebook, and twitter on dial up. That will change. I will have regular acess to high speed soon. Just be patient with me until that happens. Anyway...

A couple of months ago a child came to the school I taught at in Korea with a few stickers. They looked like they probably cost about $1. She had no interest in showing this off to the other students. She was actually upset when they showed any interest at all because she was afraid they might try to take what she had. She was so determined to keep these cheap stickers all to herself that she actually hid under a table so no one else could get her precious stickers. She was willing to isolate herself and be alone to protect the worthless thing she considered valuable.

People don’t change that much when they get older. How many grown people acquire a small sum of money or some sort of material thing and do everything they can to guard that possession? Many have chosen to be alone so they could protect their wealth, and keep others from wanting it. The joke about relatives you never knew you had appearing when you become famous is often true, and we get afraid people only show an interest in what we have because they might try to take it from us. We feel we must protect our money or new car, ipod, ring, antique, or other material possession from others. We get garages, safes, safety deposit boxes, or whatever we need to protect our treasure from others.

This is a sign of screwed up priorities. We should be laying up treasures in heaven for ourselves, and not holding tightly to the useless things of this earth. Our clinging to material things shows the idiocy of spending all our effort trying to protect our things here on earth. No matter what we do they will eventually get damaged, lost, destroyed, or taken. We can’t keep them forever. The treasures we can keep forever, however, are those we set up in heaven. Those can be acquired simply enough, and are of much more value.

When we witness to the transforming power of Jesus Christ we lay up such treasures for ourselves. When we sing out to the Lord, study His word, pray to Him, and walk in His footsteps we are doing just that. The pursuit of this real lasting treasure doesn’t create isolation, but actually encourages fellowship with those around us. The soul of a lost person is of much more value than anything made with the hands of man.

We can have material possession and be saved. We can be wealthy and be saved. Things and wealth, however, must not be our treasure. We should own our things. They should not own us. We do not owe it to our PS3 to play it at least once a day, or to our HDTV to spend money on channels that really show it off. We owe our possessions nothing. They belong to us. We belong to God. One of the great things about Him is He never changes. He doesn’t constantly come out with new versions of Himself the media insist we just have to have to be a real functioning human being. He is unchanging. The treasures we lay up in service to Him never lose their value, and never need to be updated or replaced. These treasures are what we should always pursue.