What comes to mind with the word treasure? Buried treasure? Pirate gold? Sunken wrecks? Indiana Jones movies? These all have a common factor: wealth that is tangible, as in gems, gold coins, or mysterious crystals.
There are different kinds of treasure that are also worth noting. Wisdom and knowledge. Heavenly treasures. Suffering. (Suffering???)
What treasure do we seek? The answer to this speaks volumes about our priorities, values, and character.
Herbert O’Driscoll, in his book Prayers for the Breaking of Bread:Meditation on the Collects of the Church Year, suggests a variety of treasures to consider, broadening our idea of that word and enriching our minds. He writes,
“Perhaps as Christians we would do well to look with new—or perhaps in reality very old—eyes at a number of things and realize the extent to which they can be treasures for us. Look at the Bible on the lectern, the community of faces in the stained glass, the cross or crucifix at the center of our vision, the face of someone beloved beside us, or someone we are remembering in prayer, the shining chalice on the altar or credence table, the soaring beauty of an anthem, the loveliness of a poem become a hymn, some beloved prayer. Look at them and see them as the treasures of God poured out in profligate generosity. So often all such things remain buried treasures, buried under over-familiarity, buried by disagreements, by boredom, by world-weariness, or, saddest of all, buried under an angry nostalgia for past things treasured jealously only because they are past.”
This is the thought for today: let us look for treasure with new eyes and un-bury old treasures that we may be enriched by God’s “profligate generosity.”
Several Scriptural references follow:
He will be the sure foundation for your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure. Isaiah 33:6
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.Colossians 2:3
He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward.Hebrews 11:26
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Matthew 13:44
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Matthew 6:20
