“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your tr easure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:20-21 NIV)
Behind a counter inside my local bank stands a huge vault. Behind the open door is another large door with steel bars and a large lock, and inside are walls covered with hundreds of tiny doors, each with a lock that has two spots for keys. After I sign in at the counter, a bank employee checks my signature and identification and escorts me past the barred door into the vault, using a bank key to open it and shut it behind us. I’m led to the wall with the door number corresponding with the number on my key. The bank employee uses a bank key and then my own key to open the door and remove the metal safe deposit box. Inside the box are our most important records, some that we’ve kept there for over 50 years.
I’m always impressed with this facility that hides my things in a safe place. I have a great sense of peace and security in knowing that they are protected. The bank employee leaves me alone in the vault to add, remove, or review the contents. It’s a strange but very safe feeling to be locked up deep inside the vault until I’m finished.
Remembering my bank visits causes me to consider how and where the most precious things that I’ll ever know are kept safe and secure. Where do I keep the treasures of my heart? Where is my life centred? My real life is hidden safe with Christ in God. What an awesome and wondrous truth! As the words state in the hymn, “In Christ alone”, written by Stuart Townend:
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
In Christ Alone by Stuart Townend
Can ever pluck me from His hand:
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.
“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:1-3 NLT)
Let us never forget what Christ has done in sacrificing His life to secure for us this real and eternal life in His safekeeping. We need only a broken and contrite heart to accept this life as a free gift, because God so loved the world.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 NIV)
Prayer: Dear loving Father in heaven, thank You for securing everlasting life for us. We are safe within Your holy presence. Your Spirit delivers us from evil and temptation. Our hearts can rest securely in You. You desire to live in us and through us in order to bring us into unity so that the world will see that You alone are God. May we surrender our own selfish lives to You and learn to abide in You as You abide in us. Amen.
Copyright © 2022, by Sharon Lundquist <lundquistsharon4@gmail.com>, first published on the PresbyCan Daily Devotional presbycan.ca .
Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Reprinted from PresbyCan with author’s permission