what’s in your treasure chest

This past weekend I was saying “ahoy matey” with the best of them.  My adorable, normally princess, grand daughter had decided that she wanted to become a pirate and so the sofa became a ship, and her auntie became her “assistant.”  This meant “you make my bed, clean my room and get me anything I want.”

This also meant a trip to the local Michaels craft store to make a treasure chest fit for the pirate princess, and we even found golden doubloons in the section advertising St. Patrick’s day.

As our little one filled her chest with her treasures, I was reminded of the story in Matthew 6 that talks about the anxiety that comes when we worry about filling our earthly treasure chests, when what really matters is taking care of what God cares about.

Each one of us today will come in contact with hurting people.  For some of them, you will be the only one who may choose to reach out and care.   When you see a frazzled mom in the grocery store, smile and say “how special to have such a lovely family.”  Give people eye contact, even to the scary dudes, and nod your head and say “good morning.”  Because any morning IS a good one!   “Be kind: everyone you meet is going through a battle” (Plato or Socrates, no one knows for sure!).

Start taking some of those jewels out of your treasure chest.   Buy a homeless person a sandwich, give the next person in line your 25 cent Aldi’s shopping cart, hold open a door, praise a child, speak to an elderly person and remember that once they were young.   Be the hands and feet of Jesus to all you meet today.

Matthew 6:19–34

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”