Packing for eternity

How would you feel if your task for this week was to sort through all of your earthly belongings and condense them down to 50 Rubber Maid tubs? And what you couldn't fit into that space would have to be sold, given away or trashed?

Well that's exactly what my friends April and Scott Salvant are doing this week. They, along with their five children (3 biological and 2 adopted from Haiti), have answered God's call to serve Him in Haiti. The boat full of their stuff leaves in a few weeks and now the joy that comes with saying "yes" to God is being temporarily muted by the reality of saying good-bye to loved ones and the stuff of this World.

April has been thinking a lot about these words of Jesus this week: "Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being." (Jesus, Matt. 6:19-21, message).

Most of us Christians would readily assent to the wisdom of this verse. Most of us probably feel like we try to live this way. Mike and I spend most of our income to feed, clothe, house and otherwise raise to adulthood our eight adopted children. We are investing our treasure in souls that are eternal. But still, we live in a big comfortable house, have more clothes than we can wear and don't lack any good thing.

The Salvants, on the other hand, are experiencing the extreme of this idea. The family is selling their seven bedroom house, Scott is giving up a lucrative job and the family will be relying on support from other believers to live.

God doesn't call everyone to take this path. It may seem impossibly hard to some of us; but Jesus does promise that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. The Salvants know that they are losing their lives to save them. And what a glorious day it will be when they experience the treasure that's waiting for them in Heaven.