“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21 KJV)
It is funny. In today’s world of technology, we know to either store very little locally or make good backup copies of our data on our smart phones. We know that at any moment we can loose them, drop them, break them, or they can be stolen. The programmers for our apps know this too and they make most apps capable of quickly uploading our data to some really well secured cloud storage. They even make it easy to share those pictures, notes, likes, and locations. We seem to have the ratio down pretty well of storing less locally and more of it in the cloud.
How do you actually go about storing something in heaven? With our smart phones there are apps to connect our camera with services like Google Drive, box.com, OneDrive, and Amazon. These apps manage the transmission between our photos and videos and a super secure place that we have an account with. In contrast, storing treasures in Heaven is much more than not storing them here on Earth. In fact, rather than uploading them to a highly configurable managed service; this treasure is accumulated via a better understanding of surrender. Finding that need in those around you and trying to fill it does much more than give humanitarian relief. It changes the direction of the flow. Instead of drawing things in, you see value in reaching out. Instead of showing people what you got, you show them what He is doing. Instead of identifying what you like, you reveal what the heart of God loves.
Does love run out? You bet. At least ours does every time something goes wrong! The love that Jesus shows us is our source for replenishment. He is our only way to refill. It is quite natural for us to grow wearing of dealing with rotten people. Yet He remakes them and us in the process. On Earth we have learned how to keep score of what people owe us. In this remaking, Jesus teaches us how to remember how much He paid for us. When we learn of His love and how to share that with others, we also begin to see a glimpse of the treasure tap that has already been turned on. It is a very different treasure. We could not store it all up even if we tried.
If “where” your treasure “is” identifies where your heart is; would it also make sense, that if our greatest command is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, then we must have His heart to see what is real treasure? When you give Him your heart you get a new one. One that is capable of seeing real treasure. Some of it we can even see right here.
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.” (Mark 10:21 KJV)