What's your treasure worth?

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Luke 12:34 NIV

I remember my parents watching the news when I was a kid.  We did not watch much television and if we did one of my siblings was usually responsible for adjusting the antenna, which was wrapped in foil to improve reception.  Yes, I am old enough for that to have been necessary.  I think we had three channels.  My wife grew up with one channel where she lived.  I am not sure we are better off with 84 channels than we were with three.

How in the world anyone could talk about the news for 30 whole minutes?  I was kind of smiling at that memory yesterday as the show “60 minutes” came on.  My childhood brain would have exploded with that much attention paid to the news.  My old man brain actually likes it now. 

This episode had a segment about the war in Ukraine.  This is not a political post.  But I have been thinking about it today.  They were interviewing a person who had the job of protecting history: art, sculpture, documents, and other irreplaceable items often destroyed in war.  In some cases, it is an intentional act to destroy those items to sort of erase parts of history or even the trace of an entire nation of people. 

She had been given the task of preserving as much as she could, restoring what she could once anything was damaged and otherwise salvaging the debris left after bombs destroyed huge amount of her nation’s history.  They asked her why she did it.  Her answer is what stuck in my head.  “I do it because the value of what we are trying to save is more than the value of my life.”  She was at complete peace with it.  Driven by it, in fact.  Have you ever had a job you could say that about?   

Maybe you do.  Are you married?  Ephesians 5:25 NIV is pretty clear.  “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”  Does my wife think I have the same level of commitment to her as someone protecting art in a warzone?  If not, I need to re-read my job description.

I think we picture standing in front of a bus to protect our family when the bigger need is standing beside them when you are not sure how to navigate a faith filled heart in a world that may not recognize that perspective. 

When this interview turned to her motivation her eyes got serious.  Matthew 6:22 NIV says “The eye is the lamp of the body.  If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”  Sweet wife, what are my eyes telling you?

Challenge:  Fighting the right enemy with the right weapon.  We can work, we can earn and we can build, but do we love like Jesus the very treasure He gave us like it is worth more than our own life?

Rick Claiborn