Treasures

About the year 2003, I traveled the same road daily to and from work. Back behind a very busy intersection, littered with big chain restaurants, home stores, pizza joints and fuel stations, there stood a little green house. Like a small green light in the middle of gaudy flashing neon signs.

You could tell it was built long ago. It was small, unpretentious and simply designed. At one time, there was nothing but beautiful grassy fields around it.

Giant, thick trees with branches like welcoming arms to birds and furry animals were abundant, gave shade, and cooled the hot afternoons for the people who lived there.

Then the concrete monster we call 270, the outer belt, was laid. Then the widening of Cleveland Ave and traffic lights. Then the many businesses that sprouted tall, shiny glassy structures…like metal and glass weeds sprouting up everywhere.

There stood, all alone, the little green house with a broken down car in the backyard in a nest of overgrown grass. An old rusted tractor stood as a sentinel to the days when it roared black smoke as it helped clear the fields. A dented, garage door hung like a crooked smile. Yellowed, tattered sheers hung limply at the front windows. On the front door hung a newer flowered wreath…a plastic welcome to all who entered.

Every time I passed the little green house…I thought of the people who built the house. I envisioned a proud young man, the new owner of acres of land and a house to carry his new bride over the threshold and gently care for new babies and grandbabies over the years.

Many meals cooked, many days of hard work, and fresh clean laundry on the long clothesline outside the back door.

Late nights sitting at grandma’s old mahogany table while figuring whom to pay first with the little money coming in. Years of singing, dancing, laughing, and sharing with family and friends the promises of a better day tomorrow or a more abundant harvest next year.

Many nights of tucking in children after a long days play, lovemaking, sick babies, worry, and praying. Each morning dawned with new hope as they stood at their front window with coffee in hand and watched the beautiful sunrise that illuminated their entire homestead.

Every morning God kissed their house and land with His light, warmth and beauty.

Every time I passed, I marveled of how it was still standing and the apparent tenacity of those inside…never to give it up…too precious, too many memories, and too much life in those old rooms, halls and walls to walk away….and I prayed for the people inside.

One day I passed and there was lots of trash at the curb. The next week, old broken down furniture, ancient washer, boxes of old kitchen appliances and gadgets, yellowed books and old newspapers, magazines, picture albums, and framed portraits of family and friends long passed.

Knickknacks that once lined the windowsills and stood proudly on hand made, lacy doilies on side tables, and vases that held flowers picked from the backyard were tossed into the boxes like old dirty dishrags.

The plastic flowered wreath twisted and shoved in the side of a box. I cried all the way to work at the sight of that plastic wreath.

The next week...old linoleum, carpet and curtains littered the curb. The next week, the old car and tractor were gone. The next week…a new garage door and no trash at the curb… but a shiny red and white “For Sale” sign shoved in the front lawn that stood out like an ugly festering blemish to me.

I wept again….

You see what was so important and precious to those who lived there meant very little to those left behind that had the burden of deciding what to save, what to toss, what to do with the things that were not part of their life, but part of the life of someone else.

How much money was spent to buy things…

How much thought for what was wanted and how to get it to the house…how much energy and worry expended to take care of those things….how many fights because of lack of money? How many sleepless nights wondering how to pay the collector calling everyday…how much time spent with backbreaking labor to provide all those things that ended up at the curb?

Sometimes I walk the cemetery where my mother and father in law are buried. I look at the various markers and touch the names and dates and wonder who they were, and wonder what was important to them.

I visit old cemeteries, see family plots, and try to figure what wife had what child with the patriarch buried right in the middle of many wives and children. I do not know, I can only guess, I can only imagine. One thought comes to my mind…there are none of the possessions that were once so important to them anywhere near their grave…and that is sobering to me.

Because there will come a day when people walking through an old cemetery will try to guess something about Dennis and I.

There will come a day, when my children’s grandchildren will wonder who those people in the old yellowed, faded color pictures on paper were…Ohhhh that great, great, great Grandma and Grandpa Dennis and Crystal….wow, look at those funny clothes!!

They will know very little of the lives we lived, the joys we encountered, the struggles we survived, and of hard work and long days to make life a little easier for others, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They will not know of the love we had for Christ, the many hours on our knees or the people we influenced, and the sacrifices made for believing what we believed.

Jesus said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. “ But store 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 your heart will be also. Mat 6:19-21

I get it…there was a time I didn’t…trying to keep up with the Jones’s was a full time endeavor and kept us in financial bondage for a long time.

God has truly changed Den and I and our attitude, motives and heart about money…how can you lose something if it is not yours to lose?

It all belongs to God…

Treasures are more fun when shared, given away or bought as a special gift. Treasures are much more fulfilling when money does not matter.

More than anything, people want a touch, a hug, a smile, a kind gesture and some time…an hour, a day, a lifetime of love and friendship.

Treasures for God are far more reaching, rewarding….lasting forever, and penetrating the hearts and souls of others around me.

I know that money seems to be the answer to everything…but it cannot buy one passage to heaven.

I know that we find security in things and possessions…but they will end up at the curb.



(This is part of a 6 week series I am teaching on the Beatitudes Matthew Chapters 5 thru 7)