Opening God's Treasure Chest

Opening God’s Treasure Chest

Did you ever wonder just how much is in this endless treasure chest we call the Bank of God?  How often I hear the comments of people who seem to always be out of money and ask God to bless them with a large lottery in the millions.  If God answers my need the first thing I will do is give to the most needy more than they ever believed.  Perhaps they might do that but in the meantime scratch-off tickets, one after another, results in 10.00 to 50.00 dollars.  What is God doing to me in not allowing me to get in-line to his bank?  “Seek and you will find.”  (Mt 7: 8). I sought and still have not found.   

It isn’t always cash or gold that sits in the vault at God’s Bank.  We have become so accustomed to equating wealth with treasure we miss the point of what it really means.  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroys, and thieves break in and steal.  But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroy, nor thrives break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”  (Mt 6: 19 - 21).  

How simple it appears to find elation in the coins that you can let run through your fingers as you count the wealth that jingles jangles jingles in your pocket.  It is a treasure that lasts but only a moment as you may need to pay taxes on large amounts of money or suddenly have a need that is unexpected for yourself, your spouse, or your child in an emergency.  

Your prayers never go unheard by God.  However,  your answer almost always is what your need is, not what you want.  We somehow believe that what we want is an immediate need that never comes to fruition; it is a certain disappointment for those who only see God as a distributor of lotteries without any worth but rust and decay.  

In the US Army I was rejected from two promotional positions because I did not graduate from high school.  If I would have had that diploma I never would have answered the call to ministry.  (I did finish my high school requirements through testing while in the Army).  Believe it or not, God was already going to use this absence as a path to the diaconate.  I realize my call was planned years before I was chosen by God.

Many times we may find the unrequested prayers that enter our lives seem to come out of nowhere but become the need that God saw in us when he created you and me.  This is just one treasure that we will find and produce for God as our ministry or whatever task He hands us to enhance the Kingdom of God.

Looking for that treasure is a search to receive an answer to a prayer we never uttered.  God calls and we should welcome the opportunity to follow Jesus Christ who also did the Will of his Father.  Only a few will respond to this type of wealth.  Many will keep on looking for money!

Ralph B. Hathaway