Treasure in Heaven

The bible is clear that our treasure needs to be in heaven rather than on earth as Matthew 6:19 says “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal." As it were, this very scripture became evident last week, when we had our home broken into. We are so grateful to God that no great damage was done to the house and that all that was taken were a few things of little value.

But it was this event that made me start to contemplate man's ever increasing need to lay up for himself things that ultimately will not and cannot last. These things I refer are naturally physical items which over time will eventually decay and erode.

The main thing we should ask in this world is what then are things we should be doing with our time and energy and resources? I remember an advertisement that Mercedes Benz ran a few years ago, it showed a younger man driving a new car, obviously a benz, and stated that life should begin how it often ends, with all the fine things in life and therefore time to enjoy them. And whilst this sounds nice, to live your life in enjoying the finer things it is often not these things that bring real enjoyment. Statistics show us, the things that bring most pleasure in life are relationships with family, not houses, cars and money.

Yet time and time again, the emphasis, especially in our western world, is on the gaining of more and more riches. A fact that we in the western world often forgot is almost two thirds of the worlds population live on less than one dollar per day. Less than 10% of the worlds population control 90% of it's assets. Staggering figures when we think of it. I have had the opportunity to travel several times to Vanuatu. A Country that has very little resources and which has been in years gone by dominated by Western rulers, namely the English & French. It wasn't until the 80's that rule was handed back to this Island Nation. Despite the low income and lack of resources that we are so used to in the Western world, Vanuatu has been voted time and time again as the happiest people on earth.

I recently invested some money into a long term savings account only to find that we would only receive 4% interest on our return and whilst some would say this is fine for a bank which is low risk, it at the end of the day will take a very long time before we can do anything significant with these returns. If however, we are able to invest this money into the lives and well being of others, we see an instant return on our investment whilst at the same time having the opportunity to help someone else out of poverty or even slavery.

Naturally at this point, I could say we need to learn to give of what we have and share some of the wealth that we so enjoy. The reality though, is it is unlikely this will happen. Mammon rules our society. But as Christians, we are encourage not to be of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Perhaps if we were to spend half as much time in accumulating things, to developing meaningful and loving relationships, such as the Neevans in Vanuatu do, perhaps our world would be a better place to live.