Learning from Jesus – stumbling over treasure
We never hear of Jesus going to his own house; he stays with friends; he borrows a room in someone's house for his last meal; he tells a would-be disciple that he doesn't have a bed of his own. There are other things he lacked. He never married. He never reached middle age. He seems not to have had any money, but a common purse, provided with funds by followers, for his and his disciples' needs. He had little privacy unless he went out at night into the hills. He lived a full, perfect, wholly holy life without most of the things we take for granted.
'Desperate' for marriage and children; 'wasted' in the wrong job; 'bitter' about physical handicap: we all live with some level of longing, that cannot or might not be fulfilled, but which can destroy our happiness and our peace with God. Jesus showed us that a full and purposeful life, with rich friendships and a close relationship with God is not dependent on material and personal circumstances.
The way we respond to handicaps and limitations is much more important for a full life, than the 'handicaps' themselves. If we seek and long for the material things we don't and can't have, then we are bound for disappointment and regret, and likely to lose our God-given opportunities for purpose and enrichment.
'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also' (Matthew 6:19-21).
There is another side, however, to the longing for treasures we cannot have. Many of us do have this world's material treasures in abundance and may find much of our happiness and self-fulfilment in their acquisition and up-keep. Health, wealth and good fortune can be just as powerful barriers to true heart happiness and fulfilment than the lack of them. Storing up treasures on earth or regretting that we haven't any to store, either way we are losing out.
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance through all my days;
Thou, and thou only, the first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my treasure thou art!
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