For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:21
Dear members and friends,
As a child, I remember enjoying a variety of old tales from all over the world about treasures and treasure hunters. If I remember correctly, most treasures that I read of could be divided into two categories: 1. Things that could be worth a lot in transactional value, which often is money; 2. Things that could grant you something extraordinarily special such as a cure for serious illness or a supernatural ability. The stories always seemed to be about people seeking and finding the treasure, but never about what happened after they received the treasure and returned home. Of course, the assumption was that they might have lived happily ever after.
Now over 40 years later, I am thinking that perhaps the treasures the ancient people were desperate to seek and find were not something worth a lot of money or something that would grant them supernatural ability. Instead, they may have sought hope that could lift their hearts with the strength to overcome an unfair and often harsh reality. The unchanging truth is that everything in the materialistic world is both temporary and thus essentially worthless unless they are instrumental in cultivating what is spiritual. When our time ends here, we cannot take anything with us that belongs to the materialistic world. This is why Jesus emphasized the treasures in heaven over the treasures of the world. Yet, this would only make sense if we were to believe in heaven, and our eternal life therein.
My brothers and sisters in God, this week let us take a moment of meditation on Jesus’ teaching on heaven, and our eternal life. Let us remind ourselves that we are eternal beings who are temporarily existing in this world.
Blessings, Rev. Junchol Lee