Back in middle school and the days of coveted recess time you could find me aimlessly wandering our small little school playground. I was kind of a loner, even then, when cliques weren't really a thing and everyone was gloriously naive to the social ramifications of associating with certain personality types (oh, what a savage landscape grade-school can be). I was almost constantly lost in my own imagination. Wood-chipped areas became bubbling lava pools over which I could dangle from ladders (monkey bars) spanning treacherous gaps. Concrete slabs became dry and desolate deserts with distorted mirages of water pools and no sight of oasis. Merry-go-rounds became revolving arenas of battle and teeter-totters became pirate planks. The world was my playground and the playground was my world.
You can imagine my surprise then when, one day, amidst my wanderings, I stumbled across a very tangible finding. There, buried in the wood-chips and in the shadow of the spiral slide, I uncovered a treasure. It was a ziplock bag packed full of pennies. I remember rubbing my eyes once or twice and looking around as if it was some kind of joke. Nope, no one was looking at me and laughing. Just kids playing as normal, oblivious to the transcendent experience I was having. Did some other kid lose it? Surely none of the kids I knew were that "rich". Did an adult hide it here in a hurried moment with the intention of returning? Whose treasure was this?... Mine?
I sat there clutching the bag with my thoughts running a hundred miles per hour. It was quite the internal battle really. My parents had instilled an incredibly strong sense of right and wrong in me already and my conscience was weighing down on me like an anvil. After what seemed like an eternity, I slowly covered the bag again and, with one last lingering stare, walked away, leaving the treasure for who knows what fate.
True story. I could be $1.23 richer today had I chosen differently.
~Treasure is not always monetary riches though. Treasure can be whatever holds great value to us. We all have something we treasure. I'm willing to bet most of us don't even know where we have our treasure hidden. And yet, all of our decisions revolve around protecting it. If there were a treasure hunter after your treasure, what would their map look like? Where would it lead? The formula to finding it is simple really....
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:21
You follow someone's heart, you'll find their treasure. Where are they investing their time, money, and energy? Those are the clues.
Where does my treasure map lead? Well, to be honest, the time that I protect the most is probably not the time that I should be protecting. That's something that's been on my heart lately and something I'm working on. Hopefully the healthy dose of conviction I'm administering myself helps someone else too.
I know the treasure I want people to find when they analyze my life. I know the conclusion I would want them to come to when they look at how I spend my time, my relationships, my family, and what I do when no one is looking. I want them to follow the signs of unexplained favor, genuine joy, unshakable peace, and perplexing love and, when they've discovered all of the clues, find themselves face to face with the mysterious Answer of it all.
It's not an easy journey finding that real treasure. Treasure that, once acquired, no one can steal. For others that have gone before us it has cost them their possessions, their money, their jobs (Matthew 19:21). It may even strip away everything you thought made you you. But the reward is, well, something quite hard to describe. It's something no amount of gold coins or precious gems could buy. If you haven't had the revelation that money can't buy happiness yet then there's your first nugget drawn from this treasure (Luke 9:23-25). What happens when you value that which is unseen more than that which is seen? You can do things no one has done. When you labor after another man's treasure, you'll get what you've set out to acquire. But if you labor after the bounty of heaven, you'll accomplish what no one ever has before.
Search your heart and find out where your treasure lies. Are you chasing after wind in search of the riches of this world (Ecclesiastes 1:14)? Where do you want your treasure map to lead?
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. - Matthew 6:19-21
