Day 37 - Where your treasure is

The Resurrection brings life out of death, it’s parallel to the Creation, which brought something out of no-thing.

I love Easter. You can keep all the other festivals and special days, but Easter is supremely special because it’s an annual reminder of that unique feature of God – Creation. We don’t give ourselves enough time and space to think about what that means. Absolutely everything within our experience and our understanding decays, except God who constantly brings hope out of despair and life out of death. That is what the Creation is all about.

Our job as followers of Christ is to demonstrate our understanding of that. People around us often have the impression that other things apart from God have permanence.

Psalm 49:11 puts it well: “They think in their hearts that their houses will last forever, and that the places where they live will last for all their children to follow. They have used their own names to name their lands”.

Whilst having a haircut recently, I became part of that familiar hair-dressing conversation about where this year’s holiday had been. The stylist had been on a cruise that had stopped to allow the passengers to visit Pompei and Herculaneum. She had the notion that volcanic events only happen in foreign parts. The conversation shifted to her next planned holiday venue, which is to be Tenerife. I mentioned that this island is the result of magma convection. Inevitably, this then necessitated a brief explanation of the unstable nature of the Earth and that Britain is also on a thin crust floating on a shifting liquid-like mantle and had been as far south as the tropics when the dinosaurs roamed. By the end of the haircut, the clientele and staff were all oddly quiet following some supplementary questions about tsunamis and glaciers and how nothing lasts forever.

It is usually a shocking realisation to people that nothing within our direct experience is permanent. It will change and deteriorate and so living as if possessions are permanent and worth living for is a mistake.

However, there is something beyond decay and change, and this is what Easter is about. People tried to kill God on the cross, but you can’t kill God, who demonstrated that heaven is available to those who look for that which does persist eternally.

Creation erupted out of no-thing. It is enormous and beyond our understanding, but observably, it all changes and decays. Stars become black holes. Apparently solid cities collapse under lava flows. Our nearest and dearest age and die. Creation is very beautiful, and it serves to remind us that only in heaven is there permanence. Creation does not stop with our experiences. The task is to remember that you can’t destroy God, as Christ showed. We should place our effort into that place where things last, and “store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be.” (Matthew 6:20-21).

John Cartwright