Does your family ever make fun of the TV shows you watch? My family makes fun of my shows all the time! There are two major themes to the shows I watch – first there are the various sports programs. Not much is said about these…it’s just that nobody will watch them with me. Then there are the treasure hunting shows. It is the treasure shows that my family just does not understand. It could be American Pickers or Antique Roadshow. Regardless of the show I am always fascinated by the people who find these valuable treasures in things I would have just thrown in the trash as junk!
With American Pickers, they are either looking through other people’s collections or what looks like a pile of junk. They say they are looking for “rusty gold”! I am continually amazed at the value of some of the things they buy. I guess it really is true that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure!
Antique Roadshow is a different kind of treasure hunt as people bring in their family heirlooms to discover if they are valuable or not. On one of the last shows I watched, there was a lady in Oregon who brought in an old cooking pot from the late 1700’s which was made right here in Virginia. I saw little value in the old pot, but they said it was worth thousands of dollars! My question would be – where do I pick up my money?!
So what are the things that we treasure the most? If you have ever been in my office you would see I have a collection of camels. I have one humped and two humped camels in my collection. I have all shapes and sizes of camels. And yes, it is a little weird – but I would not say I treasure this collection. For most of us what we really treasure is family, friends and faith!
God has blessed each of us by placing us in the families we have. Now you may be saying, you don’t know my family! Listen, if your family is here in the United States of America you are blessed. You or I could have been born into a family in great poverty in some third world country. The wealth of America and the health and wellbeing that often goes along with that wealth is a true blessing. Most of us never worry about having food to eat or clean water to drink simply because of the family we were born into.
It is said that a person is rich if they have many friends and this is true. I think about the many friends God has placed in my life through the years and I know how rich and blessed I am in this life. A true friend is someone who will be there for you in good times and in bad times. Think of the friends you have like this and rejoice that God has blessed you in this way.
The most important treasure of all is our Faith! The Bible actually talks about faith as being like a treasure. In Matthew 13:44 we read that the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure found in a field. The one who finds this treasure goes with great joy and sells everything in order to buy the field and possess the treasure. This is how important our faith should be for us! It should be celebrated and rejoiced about to anyone who will listen.
We often think of our faith as a “private matter” and it is true that no one else can believe for us. It is a private matter between us and God but our faith should never be a secret. The guys on American Pickers are so excited about the treasures they find they have made an entire TV show about it.
How valuable is their “rusty gold” compared to our saving faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ? If you have found this “treasure”, first of all rejoice, and secondly go and tell someone else how they too can find the greatest treasure of all. Their eternal destiny could be changed simply because you or I decided to celebrate the treasure we have already found.