Treasures
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ~Matthew 6:19-21
As I write this blog we are in the middle of what might be the biggest Rummage Sale in Pinnacle’s history. Fellowship Hall is busting at the seems, the Teen Center is overflowing with furniture, and there are more things that I never knew I needed showing up every day. As I look around I see more stuff than I really know what to do with, and it can become overwhelming.
Monday night when I returned home after spending a day picking up, sorting and making a list of things I knew I must have, I received word that my grandma, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer, had died. For the last 22 years she has been the only grandparent I've had. In the moment my dad shared the sad, but joyful words of her passing, I couldn’t help but realize that things will never be the same.
Grandma Ruth HarmonEvery summer since I was little I have spent many days at my grandma’s cabin fishing and swimming. When we were there, Orange Crush was always in the refrigerator, no matter how hard it was for her to find, and Reese’s Cups and Snickers were in the freezer for us to snack on. Ever since I could remember, she always had two refrigerators at her cabin; one was for food and one was for the fishing worms. Items in the two refrigerators rarely mixed, but according to Grandma, she did find worms in her cabbage once, but that could have just been one of her stories.
I never knew any of my great-grandparents as I was growing up, but luckily for my kids, even Jude, my youngest, got to spend time with their GG (great-grandma). To my kids, she is best known for her back scratches. Most nights when they go to bed they ask if we can scratch their backs like GG. I do, but they are never quite as good, and I hope they never will be.
As I headed back to pick up more things and sort more rummage today, it didn’t look the same. It didn’t look the same until my kids showed up to help out. Well, Trey helps, but Savannah and Jude do more destruction than help sometimes. When my kids showed up today, I was reminded that in a room full of “stuff” the real treasure lies in our families and friends, the people we choose to invest our lives in.
It is easy in life to get so caught up in “stuff”, whether it is work, or school, or buying the newest and best thing, that we lose site of our real treasures. Treasures are not something that will rust, break, or end up at a Rummage Sale. They are our relationships - our relationships with our families, our relationships with our friends, and most importantly, our relationship with our God.
If you are reading this and have donated items to the Rummage Sale, thank you. But know that all of the “stuff” that we get, none of it, is real treasure. However, the items we receive do provide a background for the real treasure to appear - the relationships that are made and conversations that take place that might not happen anywhere else.
So if you would like to come out and enjoy some real treasure this week, don’t wait until the sale, because you might miss all of the real treasure that the Rummage Sale has to offer.