In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 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 treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Where is your heart? Jesus said our heart will be where we have invested ourselves.

In Luke chapter 12 Jesus told a parable about a foolish farmer who invested in the wrong treasure. He seems to be a decent guy. Apparently he wasn’t deceitful or corrupt. He probably had worked hard to make his fortune. His heart was just not in the right place. After his fields yielded a good crop he said, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” Go back through that again and you’ll see all the personal pronouns: I, me, my, I.

That’s where the man went wrong. Max Lucado puts it like this: “The rich farmer went to the wrong person (“He thought to himself”) and he asked the wrong question (“What shall I do?”). His error was not that he planned but rather that his plans didn’t include God. Jesus criticized not the man’s affluence but his arrogance, not the presence of personal goals but the absence of God in those goals. What if he’d taken his money to the right person (God) with the right question (“What do you want me to do”)?

Much of our desire to accumulate treasures for ourselves is a defense against fear in our lives. We ask “What if I lose my job?” “Will my health coverage cover it all?” “How long between retirement and death?” Our fears of running out cause us to decide that the more we have, the safer we are. That’s what the foolish farmer thought, but what he didn’t know was that he was afraid of the wrong thing. Instead of fearing a future without food, he should have thought about a future without him in it!

In Luke 21 Jesus was watching people put their offerings in the temple treasury. In verse 1 Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. Then in verse 2 He was a poor widow put in two small copper coins.” Jesus told His disciples, “This poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

What made the difference between this poor woman and the rich farmer? The difference is the poor woman never forgot God. She trusted Him to care for her. The wealthy farmer wanted to take care of himself, the widow knew that God would care for her. May we follow her example.