From Pastor Pat Kriss: Our Treasure
(Posted July 29, 2017)We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat."
-----John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, 20th century
Here’s a real question for you, and one to think about before Sunday’s service.
If you knew for certain that, by tomorrow you would lose everything except one thing so essential to you, near and dear to you, that you would do anything to keep it --- what would it be? What would you choose to be your treasure above all else?
Worship with Us
Summer services begin at 9:30 a.m. at 164 Deer Hill Ave in Danbury.
This week, in a series of parables meant to tell us what matters most, Jesus makes it clear that our most important possession is our faith in the love of God. That God loves us, even at the darkest moments, even when we are most unloveable. Faith…. Even faith that is no bigger than a mustard seed… is all we need to move mountains, or to overcome mountains. Love is what empowers us even in the worst of times. It protects our hearts against the cheaters and the con artists. As the apostle Paul says, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Love is truly our one and only enduring treasure. It is our wellspring for hope as well. Think about the little “treasures” we hold onto that remind us of the people in our lives who give us meaning. In a hidden pouch in my bathroom I keep a set of eyebrow tweezers. They were used by my mother and given to me as a gift when I was 12. They are truly not much to look at, with rusted hinges and the paint peeling off the handles. To anyone else they are worthless. But to me, they are priceless, a reminder of the times I spent with my fashion model mother in the mornings when she put on her makeup. The treasure, you see, is not the tweezers. The treasure is the undying bond between a mother and a child when that mother was taken from her before her time. The treasure is love.
So….. what is the treasure that lies at the center of your heart? What makes life meaningful? Come join us this Sunday and explore. --- Pastor Pat Kriss