Matthew 6:19-21 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
I recently went to Branson, Missouri, to a “Five and Dime Store,” where everything in the store brought memories to my mind flooding back to when I was a child. The first thing that caught my eye was the candy. I remember as a child, sometimes my Mom would give us each a dime and at that time, 10 cents was worth a lot, We would instantly go to the candy section in front of the store and pick out ten pieces of candy, each of them costing one penny. We bought Kit Kats, Abba Zabas, Fireballs, Big Hunks, Bit-O-Honey, Black Cow, candy necklaces, Chick-O-Stick, Jaw Breakers and Necco Wafers, just to name a few. We would take our little paper bag back to our tree fort or to our front porch and we would sit there for hours and enjoy our booty of goodies and then we would be off to play with our friends until the sun went down. As I walked through the “Five and Dime Store,” there was a feeling that came over me and the technical term for what I was feeling is called “nostalgia.” The word “nostos” in the Greek means “return home” and “algos” means “pain.” I find it interesting that the word nostalgia means “return home + pain” which equals the discomfort you feel when longing to get back to your home. Nostalgia is a bittersweet longing for the past, the sentimental, the wistful feeling you get when thinking of happy days gone by. It’s wanting to recapture something you once had or once felt, some point in your life that was a golden time. Each of us possesses a sense of nostalgia when we think of sweet memories of holidays, of smells in the kitchen when Mom was baking and of pictures we look back on when we were young. One thing we can never do is go back, and things are always rosier in the rearview mirror if we allow ourselves to think of “the good old days.”
Matthew 12:35 says, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.” The interesting thing about spiritual homesickness is that it’s not actually a desire to go back to a place where we used to live; it’s an aching for a place where we will live one day. What we really have is a case of future nostalgia; we are actually homesick for a place we have never been, but that we really belong to. A longing to be with a family that isn’t flesh and blood, but a family where our relationships as brother and sister are far reaching to the ends of the earth. As children we learned early on whether or not our daddies were a safe place to go and a soft place to land when our knees were skinned, when our feelings were hurt or when our dreams had died. The word “father” conjures up a unique set of mental images and emotions for each of us. For some of us, it is warm and secure, while for many others it is cold and unstable, distant or even abusive. The response of our earthly fathers manifests itself and is revealed in our lives because the images of our childhood are shaped by our imperfect earthly fathers and how they loved us, if they were tender toward us or if they rejected us. By calling God our Father, we are establishing our identity in the kingdom of Heaven; we are acknowledging that we are His children with all the benefits and responsibilities that come with being in His family. We long for a day and a world in which God is praised and obeyed, a world where God reigns. Because we have placed ourselves in God’s family and under His authority, we welcome His work, and His way and we give ourselves to serve Him completely and wholeheartedly. Our priorities in life change and we long to be with Him in His heavenly home where our true treasure lies and where moth and rust will never destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal and where our hearts and souls truly belong.
– Melody
