Where The Treasure Is

Where the Treasure Is

Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Matthew 6:21

Today is income tax day—a day when we are, perhaps, more focused on our money than any other day of the year. Most of us are filling out the complicated IRS forms and grudgingly paying “our fair share” to the government, wishing our fair share was just a little more fair.

In our consumeristic society, we are often overly focused on our money, or lack of it—what it will buy, what we cannot buy without it, the seeming prestige it gives the ones who have it, the lack of respect it sadly gives to those who do not have it. And yet, as my preacher daddy used to say, “The Lord must love poor people, because he made so many of us.”

Abraham Lincoln himself came from a poor upbringing, yet he rose to the highest office in our land and became one of the most respected presidents the United States has ever known. His down-home wisdom and natural wit won him an enormous following and endeared him to our nation for all time.

Once Hugh McCulloch, then secretary of the treasury, brought a delegation of New York bankers to meet President Lincoln. As they came into the room, McCulloch whispered to him, “These gentlemen from New York have come to see about our new loan. As bankers, they are obliged to hold our national securities. I can vouch for their patriotism and loyalty, for, as the Good Book says, ‘Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.’”

Lincoln nodded knowingly and said quietly, “There is another text, Mr. McCulloch, I recall, that might equally apply: ‘Where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.’”

O God, please help me today to focus on what I have, rather than on what I do not have. I am so richly blessed in so many ways, and I am thankful to you for providing for me so well. Amen.