So many others have been boasting of their worldly achievements
My garden is blooming. In the past week Anna, my wife and I have had wax beans and green beans. My cucumbers are blossoming, and the corn is one and a half foot tall. I take no credit. Tulsa rains and God have done it all. I am on the sidelines enjoying the show. Growing plants is slow. It is a daily process of checking water and weeds. The miracle is all God’s and not me. I am the caretaker.
Saint Paul writes, I have worked and labored, often without sleep. So many of us do the same thing. We work for security, family and churches. We work for political causes. We work for neighbors. Some of us work for money or just the sake of working. Jesus says in today’s Gospel ‘Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Life is a balance between physical and spiritual. To be honest we are only caretakers of this life. We have to work for spiritual and physical needs. 4
How will be answer for our deeds?
I am not talking about the state of grace that we all should be in. I am talking about what we have done to be more like Saint Paul who suffered building the Kingdom of God here on Earth. We not only have to account for our sins, but also for the things we didn’t do. Life is not a game of Monopoly but a series of opportunities to build treasures in Heaven. Jesus says, ‘The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be all darkness. If then, the light inside you is darkness, what darkness that will be!’
Each one of us has the light of Christ in us. We can’t keep it to ourselves. It might light up our path, but to build treasures we have to lead others to that light. My garden will die it I don’t water and care for it. I have to do work to make it grow. We also have to work to spread the light of Christ to others. Then we will have treasures, but not the treasures my garden will produce at harvest. We need to work for the real treasures that build treasure in Heaven.
I have a small savings account; I work 17 hours a week; I volunteer for church. I pray for the lost. I pray for the President. I pray for immigrants. I pray for justice. In heaven the only thing that will remain is the good I do on Earth. I don’t own anything because in the end I am only a caretaker. My treasures are in Heaven.
God Love You Always
Bob Burford
PS: Please Pray for the soul of our beloved Pontiff, Pope Francis and for his successor, Pope Leo. Please Pray for Cancer victims and their caregivers. Pray for the conversion of Russia and the salvation of the Ukrainian and Russian people and their soldiers. Pray for the Holy Land. Pray for peace! The impossible could and can happen. Never deny God.
