Storing Treasures

We have been storing up treasures! Most would think that I am crazy for calling a bunch of jars of fruits and veggies treasures, but that is what they are to me! I have even said before that my laundry room is my favorite room in the house, but that is because it also serves as a canning pantry. I love to be able to see all of the colorful jars and all of the hard work on display.

Canning is hard work, but it is something that I enjoy doing. My mother-in-law used to tell people that she taught us to can tomatoes and that we took it to the next level! She actually bought husband our canner for Christmas one year. She came and stayed with us a week about 15 years ago and we canned tomatoes. There is absolutely nothing like home canned tomatoes added to soups, chili, and tomato gravy! From that point, we began to can whatever we could that came from the garden or the local you pick farm.

Our garden is currently producing quite a bit and the time has come for the canner to come off of the shelf and get to work. Pickles, jalapenos, and green beans have already made their way onto the shelves. Many other treasures have made their way into the freezers. Corn on the cob, english peas, and stewed squash are safely tucked away in the deep freeze. Whether stored in jars or in the freezer, they are treasures none the less. When our family needs them, they will all fill our bellies over the next year or more.

Sharing these treasures is even more of a blessing than cooking with them for my own family. I love to be able to send jars of pickles with my daughter back to college or bless someone with a jar of pepper jelly or blueberry pie filling. Those are gifts that mean so much, in my opinion, because they have such value to me. I know the time and effort that went into each jar; not just the effort of canning, but the labor of love that started with the prepping of the garden, the planting and tending, and then the harvesting.

When you give someone something that you treasure, the value of the gift is so much greater.

As I was canning pickles the other day, the word treasure came to mind and I couldn’t help but think of Matthew 6. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,  but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Those vegetables have to be eaten quickly or they won’t last. Canning is one way of making them last longer. We are storing them up where they cannot be destroyed, for the short term. But they will fade away. They cannot last forever. Those jars can even be dropped and broken! Just the thought makes me want to cry! All of the work and time that it took to fill those jars, the months of gardening to get to this point….gone.

But you know what? None of that compares to laying up our treasures in Heaven. Many scholars have tried to figure that out and most have an opinion. But the more I thought on it, the more I understood it. Just like I have sealed those jars and stored them for the day that I walk into that pantry to grab what I need, every time that my heart is set on God and every time that I serve Him and not myself, I am storing up my treasure in Heaven

One of my favorite teachers and commentators, David Guzik, explains it like this, we should be using our earthly treasures for eternal good. Our heart and our treasures cannot be in two different places. SO where is your heart? Whatever is in your heart, that is what you spend your time and money on. That is where you have stored your treasures. Is your heart focused on the Kingdom or earthly pleasures? Is your heart set on serving others and building them up or…?

One day I will be there. One day I will be at the feet of Jesus and my plan is this: I plan to have crowns to lay at His feet. I don’t want them for selfish reasons. No, I plan to have crowns to lay at His feet because He has done so much for me, given me sooo much, that I want to have everything I can to give back to Him. Revelations chapter 4 tells of the elders who fall before The Throne and worship at HIS feet as they cast their crowns before Him in worship.

I want so much more than to just kneel and fall before Him. I want to lay my trophies at His feet. I want every kind word, every deed done, every dollar given, every soul saved, everything I have ever done for Him to amount to mountain of crowns that I can bring before Him to show honor and glory where it is due. I want that. I want those kinds of treasures.

Sometimes, I will go into my laundry room and yes, I stand and look at all of the jars. They are all pretty and colorful. They hold such blessing and promise. And yes, they make me pretty proud of us and all of the work we did to get them there on those shelves. I can only imagine the day that we enter Heaven. And I can only imagine the feelings that we will feel as we look around at the treasures that await us, the lives that will be there because we set our hearts on Heaven instead of ourselves.

I can’t begin to imagine the look on His face at the treasures we have amassed up there. As we stand before Him and wait on those words, “Well done.” I hope He looks at me and is proud of me. I hope He finds glory in my treasures. I pray that every day until then, I set my heart on Him and store my treasures where my heart is!

So I’ll cherish the old rugged Cross. Till my trophies, at last, I lay down. I will cling to the old rugged Cross, and exchange it some day for a crown

“The Old Rugged Cross” is a popular hymn written in 1912 by evangelist and song-leader George Bennard.