What Is Your Treasure?

It was early in our relationship when Kevin and I were taking a walk. It happened to be the night before trash pick up in our area. Some of the people had their trash out by the street for the trash collectors. On our way back home we were just around the corner from where we lived. Kevin stopped in front of a house and picked up a lawn chair and handed it to me. “What?” I said feeling embarrassed. He said, “These are good chairs and we can use them.” With the lawn chair in hand and Kevin carrying the matching chaise lounge, we headed home. I walked as fast as I could, fearing someone would see us.

After close inspection of the chairs, we were delighted to find them in very good shape. They were wicker on metal frames. When you sat in them they would subtly rock without much persuasion. All they needed was a good cleaning and fresh paint. Those chairs lasted ten years! Friends who came over and sat in them always asked where we found such nice chairs. They would say how hard it was to find them built so nice and sturdy. We lived in a quiet neighborhood nestled in the woods. During the fresh cool mornings and the winding down of the sunset, there was rest offered by the rustling leaves springing forth from the many trees surrounding our house. The joyful chatter of little birds, the buzz of the katydids, the chirping of the tree frogs and toads all joined together in a lullaby of nature offering many refreshing naps in our wicker chaise lounge.

Our "retirement" home before God's call!

Trash picking is a sort of occupation here in our Colombian city. There are many street people. You can see them everywhere. They sleep anywhere. We even see them asleep on the busy streets and sidewalks of the center of the city where commerce and shopping takes place. However, on trash pick up days, we see them busily hustling about with burlap bags in hand, sorting through the refuse lining the streets. They stuff loot they find in their bags and eat things that will satisfy their hunger pangs.

In the past, we fought guilt when we threw out food that we thought was too bad to eat after being in the refrigerator for a week or found something in a drawer or closet that was no longer of any use. Here, we don’t have that guilt anymore. We know if we throw something away, somebody out there will find it and use it or eat it.

It was proven to us today. In the morning we threw away three Gatorade bottles. They came as a promotional gift with the purchase of Coca-Cola light. We didn’t like them because the water put in them tasted like plastic. Kevin even commented as he tossed them in the trash that we didn’t have to feel guilty about throwing things out since someone out there will find use for our trash. Shortly after we put the bottles into the trash chute, about ten or fifteen minutes, we left to take our morning exercise walk. We stepped out of the elevator and saw that our porters had already found the three bottles. They had taken them out of the trash and apparently were going to take them home to use!

You have heard the adage, “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” The Apostle Paul could have become a prominent leader in the world of Judaism. Directly after conveying his very impressive credentials to the Jews who recognized their worth, Paul called them rubbish. Paul was culturally entitled to status of the highest standard. While others would have cherished the position and influence Paul had at his fingertips, here’s what he penned after delineating his qualifications:

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:7-8)

Paul had a holy ambition that was higher than those things the world sees as impressive and successful. He was so passionate about his new life of denial to the world that he warned against the religious influence of Judaism. He told his readers to beware of the dogs, evil workers and those of the false circumcision. These were the same people Paul passionately worked for before his conversion. The Christians he was determined to kill and imprison were now his brothers and sisters in Christ. His occupation and purpose for the rest of his life was to preach the gospel and plant churches.

Tennessee sunset

Here in our eleventh story apartment, we no longer enjoy the feeling of solitude that we felt in the confines of our quiet wooded back yard just a few years ago. Instead, we are surrounded by the cacophony of the thump, thump, thump of rumba music, explosions of fireworks and/or gunfire, horns from cars and other vehicles, people singing very bad karaoke and very VERY loud parties every weekend at the club next to our building. But, like Paul, we count our previous and seemingly far off old life, rubbish compared to the joy of being in the will of God.

Every day is a spiritual challenge to the child of God. We are bombarded with the things we hear through the media. We are assaulted by the sensual drive to be pleasing and to be pleased. The ambition to gain recognition and riches drives us to search for new and greater ways to increase in status and wealth. Or maybe some of us are not realizing the potential that God has gifted us with. It could be that we are great speakers, but we are afraid to speak. Or perhaps we are writers or teachers who think that what we long to say is not important to others. Some of us might think our inclination to be kind and hospitable to others is trivial and unimportant.

It is time for the children of God to stop and consider what it is we are striving for. We need to ask ourselves if it is the thing that God has meant for us from the beginning of our lives. There is within us something that drives us to an end. To discover the truth of what drives us requires us to go straight to the heart of what we are endeavoring to be. When we honestly evaluate what it is that instinctively drives us, we must be absolutely honest with ourselves and the Holy Spirit. He knows and He wants us to realize who we are in Him. There is an objective that he set before us as He formed us in our mother’s womb.

Paul later said this:

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Is there garbage stinking up your life? Is there clutter taking up space in your heart? Paul called it excrement, the bodily waste matter that is of no use to the health and well being of the body and spirit. The challenge to all of God’s children is to seek that for which He created us. Is there a wicker chair or a Gatorade bottle within you that you have laid aside as trivial? Your treasure is to be who you are in Christ. It is only then that you will realize the full reward of His heavenly call on your life. It is only then that you will find the joy and reward not only in this life, but in the life to come. To be in the presence of the lover of our souls is to walk in the purpose for which He created us.

Instead of a lost disregarded treasure, let it be a precious treasure found.

Jesus said, “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:21)