Where Are Your Treasures Stored?

While pulling the garbage container up our long, narrow driveway, I pried my eyes open to see the unraked leaves, the cracks, the moss clinging to the edges, and the gradual chipping away due to heavy rains and poor drainage system. More reasons why I want to stick a for sale sign in the yard and let someone else deal with it.

Before buying this house, I asked my husband if he was sure he wanted this much yard to keep up. In spite of my doubts and trying to get him to envision us thirty years down the road, I couldn’t change his mind.

So, here we are, thirty years down the road, old and feeble and too weary to fulfill the constant demands of keeping up our house and the property it sits on.

Not that we haven’t done any renovations. A few years ago we had a metal roof and new windows installed. And last year, we took up the ratty old carpet and installed vinyl plank flooring. Just the two of us.

I like things neat and sparkling clean. When stuff breaks down, I want it fixed . . . yesterday. I want a place for everything and everything in its place . . . all the time. No pealing paint. No crooked pictures on the wall. No cracks in the driveway.

But my neat and tidy little world has crumbled to the ground. Because I can no longer do the things I once could, I’m slowly losing control and my house is swiftly taking over. And that makes me very sad. Very angry. And very frustrated and depressed.

I never dreamed when we moved into this house that it would one day get the best of me. That today I would find myself tearfully longing to move into my brand new dream house and start over.

But my dream house will never be built on this earth. It’s being built in heaven by the Master Builder Himself. It will never get dirty. It will never need painting. It will never get old and dilapidated. It’s splendor will last forever.

So, I’m trying to focus more on eternal things in heaven and less on temporal things on earth. This house is not my maintenance-free-forever home. It’s just a little tent pitched in the wilderness and slowly fading into the sunset.

We all have certain expectations of what our lives should look like: the person we marry, the house we buy, the car we drive, the clothes we wear. And we work hard to have those things and sometimes cling to those things as if they were our greatest treasures. But those things are only temporal and can be taken away in the blink of an eye.

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 do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:19-21).