Treasures

I was on a mission.

My husband had taken the kids on a walk and I had a few minutes to race through the house cleaning and picking up all of the items which seemed to cover every square inch of floor.

I became a veritable “Mommy Tornado”!

Nothing was safe as I worked my way up the stairs and followed the trail of Legos leading to my son’s room.

The epicenter of the mess.

As I looked around the room my eyes landed on his dresser which was strewn with every kind of knick-knack you could imagine.

I started shoving things into drawers and bins not really caring if it landed in the right one. I just wanted it out of sight.

Where on earth did all of this stuff come from?

Here were rocks, there were little slips of paper and an acorn or two thrown in for good measure. I knew why they were in his room.

You see, in my son’s case, one man’s trash literally IS another man’s treasure! Each of these items was intended to be stored away in the most sacred of places.

His Treasure Drawer.

Ticket stubs, batteries, coins, a leather pouch filled with “gold”, pieces of broken toys.

I began going through that drawer looking for items which could possibly be extracted without my son noticing. And I wondered why he had chosen those particular things.

What was it about the particular piece of bark from the playground that caught his eye? Why was that string so valuable to him? And I just couldn’t bring myself to throw anything out. These are all cherished items. They represent something.

Something he wants to remember. Something he wants to hold onto.

And it got me thinking.

What am I holding onto?

What can I not let go of?

What is in my “treasure drawer”?

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, 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 is also.” Matthew 6:19-21

I know I have a lot of earthly treasures.

I have a home I love and I enjoy making it warm and welcoming. In that home are many things I value, things which have been passed down from generation to generation. Like my grandmother’s china cabinet.

And as grateful as I am for those things, I’m sure that I can’t fully appreciate just how tremendously blessed I really am. Until you have truly gone without, I don’t think you can grasp the magnitude of how much you really have to be thankful for.

But, to be honest, I don’t struggle as much with the “storing up” of those things in my heart.

It is what, or rather WHO, lives inside my home that I want to hide away in my treasure drawer.

There are 3 of them, and they are my treasures.

They are where my heart is.

They consume my thoughts and make up the bulk of my worries and fears.

I hold onto them tightly and begin to think that somehow I can control everything.

I “store up” this control until it paralyzes me to think of something ever happening to my treasures. What if the “moth and rust” seep in? What if “thieves break in and steal”?

What if?
What if?

And yet, they aren’t really mine, are they?

They belong to the One who loves them even more than I do.

A love like that seems impossible to imagine.

“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19

They are really His treasures!

So, I pray for His help in releasing my grip.

I pray that what I “store up” in my heart is a deeper and more abiding love for Him.

And that I will recognize that they never were my treasures to begin with.

They are gifts!

Gifts given to me to cherish while we are here on this earth.

Gifts of which I am only really just a steward.

Gifts which I treasure having in my life.