Inspire Me!
By Pam Best
Excuse me...I am in a philosophical mood
right now....I warn you in advance! (*smile*)
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
It is a fact of life that whereever you put your
valuables, your heart or your desires or your thoughts are there. That's why we have
insurance. We want to protect our possesions. They have special places in our
hearts...whether their value be sentimental or financial. God admonishes us to store our
valuables in His house. There is safety there.
My Interpretation:
My question to us all is simply this: What do we treasure? What means the most to us?
Because when we answer this question, we are led to this one: Where is our treasure? The
answer to that question tells us where our heart is. Ok, God is working with me on this
example so, bear with me. This devotion will be in 3 parts. The first will be dealing with
What our treasure is. Monday, we'll get into Where our treasure, and therefore our heart,
is and the trouble with laying up earthly treasure. Finally, on Tuesday, we will talk
about putting it all into perspective. Here we go.
I have a very small, select group of friends (REAL friends). What I treasure the most is
their opinion of me. What they think of me matters. So my actions or treatment of these
friends is in a way, an attempt to store up or reap the reward of their high opinion of
me. In simpler terms. Their friendship means so much to me, that I am willing to work for
it. So I store up their love for me. I store up their respect for me. I store up their
care and concern. They are my treasures. .....But, this whole concept has me spinning,
because now that I turn this thing over in my mind, my "treasures" are mindsets
and non tangible things that are made evident by certain actions: phone calls, lunches,
dinners, walks in the park, visits, cards, letters.... This is the real substance of what
I treasure. What happens though, when the phone calls stop? What do I think when we no
longer go out to lunch or walk in the park, or we no longer darken each others doorsteps,
or we don't send cards and letters anymore? I know for me, it is very difficult to
separate evidence of love from love itself. When my phone stops ringing, I start to think
"Such and such doesn't love me anymore." or "So and so doesn't respect me
or value me anymore" or "Thus and so doesn't want to spend time with me
anymore." And I get so hurt and confused wondering what I did and how I can fix it.
When I finally get it together enough to approach my friend, I find out that the phone was
out of service or they were out of town or they were just bogged down and busy. All that
hurt over nothing. So I have to ask myself continually, "Do I really treasure the
love, respect, care, and concern....or do I just treasure the phone calls, walks, talks,
time, attention, lunches, dinners, visits, cards, and letters? Do I regard the form of
friendship and not the power of what friendship really is?" The thought kind of
scared me. All of this time, I was so sure that I knew what I valued, now I have to be
careful. It's not that we don't need the phone calls (or need to make the phone calls).
Friendships need to bear fruit. But we have to learn to value the friend more for who that
person is and not so much for what that person does for us. So the only thought I want us
all to ponder this weekend is this: What do I treasure? Once we have that established, We
can determine the answer to Mondays question together...Where is our treasure laid up. God
Bless
Opionions are those of the author
- not necessarily those of TopBlacks
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