Cherished Possesions

Where Is Your Heart?

 “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”    Matt:6:21

Did you offer to release something for the Lenten season this year?

  Do you remember what it was? 

 Was it a cherished possession
 you’ve always dreamed of owning 
and handing down to your children?

 Perhaps it was a particular item you needed 
in order to complete a collection. Now you were giving it away.

Was it an object you’ve desired to own for years?

Could it have been an item

in which you’d lost interest?

In the Gospel of Mark, a man comes running to Jesus,
 kneels down before Him and asks, 

“What must I do to get to heaven?” Jesus answers, “You know the commandments, don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie,

always respect your Father and your Mother.”

The man replies, “Teacher, I’ve never broken a single one of those laws.”

Scripture tells us that Jesus felt genuine love for the man.

He said to him, 

“You only lack one thing, go and sell all that you have

and give the money to the poor,

 and you shall have treasure in heaven.”

A difficult thing was required of the man. 

A difficult thing is also required of you and me.

So then what is required?

Would we give up our home 
in order for a poor family to have a place to live?

Would we give up our annual vacation
 in order to give our employer 
the opportunity to give our
vacation pay
  to a person who has no employment?

Would we transfer our civil rights 
to someone who has none,

such as an illegal immigrant?

Jesus told his disciples, 

“It is easier, easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

The disciple, in turn, exclaimed,
“Then who can enter and be saved

if a rich man cannot?” 

Who is a rich man? What makes him rich?

Jesus suggests that the things we treasure most 
are the things that make us rich. 
Those things are our homes,
 our parents, our brothers and sisters,

our children and our property.

Are we willing to give up those things 
for the privilege of entering heaven?

Jesus tells us we will be rewarded one hundred times over 
with the same things we willingly gave away.

 We do this for the love of God

and for the privilege 
of being able to share with others

 the Good News of the Gospel.

In addition to receiving such abundant rewards,

 we will also receive persecutions.

In spite of them, in the world to come
 we shall have eternal life.

The Christian walk has many twists and turns.

What things then, are to be desired?

God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering.

 Abraham was willing to obey.

 In Genesis 22 the angel of the Lord told Abraham

 to stop and not hurt the boy.

 “For I know that God is first in your life.

 You have not even withheld your beloved son.”

Is God first in my life? 
Is He first in yours?

Will God wait for us 
as we take these faltering steps 
to become closer to Him?

How many times will God forgive us
 when we don’t quite measure up?

“I” should have made that phone call.

“You” should have stopped to visit that person.

Why didn’t I send that card?

Why did “you” refuse when you were asked to serve
on a committee at church?

We said, “Ask someone else”.

 Someone else was asked

and someone served God 
in the place that had been offered to us.

Do we sometimes wonder 
if that person will take our place
at the gates of heaven?

Wonderful treasures are all around us…

everywhere we look…

every day of our lives.

From Scripture, 
a line in the Gospel of Matthew seems appropriate.

 “Where your treasure is,

there will your heart be also.”
(Matthew 6:21)

Where is your treasure?

Did you know that your heart is there also?

Your heart is the very thing that gives you life.

Is your heart and treasure with Jesus?

copyright©2019

Photography By Mary Anne Tuck

https://www.thatremindsme.chat  (Memories and Observations)