Treasure

Watching the daily reports on what is becoming a global financial melt down, I find myself experiencing a range of emotions that move from shock to denial to disgust. Along with many others, I've watched our kid's college savings and my retirement plummet in value. Not even government rescue plans or rate cuts seem to be slowing the descent. As Steven Colbert noted on Comedy Central Monday night "As bad as it has been, we still have 9000 points in the Dow to go." Comforting. I guess you either laugh or cry!

This morning I let my mind wander. What if things did get worse? What if our bank, starved for cash called in my home loan and the reserves that would allow me to pay off my mortgage were swallowed whole in the markets. What if the donor base that supports my organization dried up! It reminds you how fragile our treasure this side of heaven actually is.

Our current events make a prophet out of Mortimer Zuckerman who in an editorial in U. S. News and World Report last year called the 90's and early 2000's a golden age of prosperity in America that is unlikely to be repeated. Clearly, many people thought and lived like it would go on forever.

Poignant are the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:19. The audience to which he spoke was a large crowd of the down and outers--the sick, oppressed, marginalized, and spiritual outcasts. These were not the self-sufficient, but those that had nothing to lose (today we might see ex-Lehman Brothers employees or retirees that have lost their nest eggs). In Matthew 5-7, Jesus is sharing what spiritual reality is like . . . the reality that is always there but obscured by the physical reality we live in and the pseudo-realities we like to construct. In Matthew 6:19 he speaks of treasure: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourself treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and thieves do not break in steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

This is spiritual reality: life offers two treasures--one fragile, vulnerable, and fleeting; the other measured in spiritual capital and eternal. I've nodded to this truth and even let it shape some major life choices. Instead of a quest for security and a corner office, I choose downward mobility and a life of service. Even so, the recent financial meltdown has betrayed a reliance upon and preoccupation with treasure. I still care about stuff and security in things more than I would care to admit. At the same time, I've been reflecting upon my portfolio as it relates to spiritual treasure. It has challenged me to think about the people that by God's grace I've influenced . . . people I've encouraged, shaped, or even challenged to live beyond themselves and for a cause that transcends the skirmishes and quests of this world.

I find encouragement in the reality that I can still build a portfolio of eternal treasure with no diminishing returns. I'm used by God to bless a person that blesses another who in turn blesses others, etc. While there is little in my power that I can do to recover what I've lost in my earthly treasure in recent weeks, NOTHING can threaten or diminish my heavenly treasure! It keeps building! It keeps benefiting others . . . inviting and bringing them to "the eternal kind of life."