“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Matthew 6:19 – 21

We know, intuitively, that it is important to have enough money to get us through life’s demands.  So, we protect what we have and work at getting more. Hopefully we will have enough.  We do all this knowing that what we stack up here will not get to heaven at all.  All that activity happens here on the earth. It is so important to us that it is about all we get done, just making sure we have “enough.”

I try to imagine, for a moment, what difference it would make in my life if I was absolutely convinced that my most important task is to “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  That language is so strange to me that, to tell the truth, I have almost no idea what Jesus is talking about.  I know something about the way money works, but I know that there will be no dollars in heaven.  No money will be there, nothing that we can depend on  is available.

The real “money” that Jesus is talking about is something much different.  At this point He does not elaborate on what he means, except that chasing money and this world’s goods is of limited purpose, because, He reminds us, earthly treasures stay with the earth.  They are meaningless in heaven.

What does this mean as I enter this day, having just celebrated Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday?  Could it be that when Anna Ruth and I held hands this morning and prayed together for those in need, naming them one by one, is laying up treasure in heaven? Or that the check we write today to further the advance of the Gospel in the world is that?  Or helping my son with a small task about his house is doing that?  I am not all that sure.  I am not very good at earmarking deeds or thoughts of mercy.  Maybe I should.

In any case I feel way down deep in my soul that I should not depend on any earthly currency to purchase God’s mercy.  Spiritual currency is of a different sort.  I believe Jesus is in my spirit, by the way of the Holy Spirit, and the work that he does is “heaven work.”