Treasures, Part I

My nephews in with the below-mentioned piano in our music room

"Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and rust, or--worse!--stolen by burglars.  Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moths 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."  Matthew 6:19-21 (Message)

What are your treasures?

I was thinking about mine the other day, and I have several.  The first to come to mind is my Samick grand piano, a heavy-as-lead instrument given me by my mother when I graduated from college. It's not the piano itself that is the treasure. This piano symbolizes my mother's supportive and motivational presence in my life for all my years so far.  She is the one who constantly fostered my interest in becoming musically trained, who gave me the determined conviction that a woman can do whatever she sets her mind to do, who raised me to live with the assumption that an educated woman is a happy woman.  She's the one who has modeled a love of the arts and of reading.  But more than that, the piano she gave me symbolizes a giving spirit.

Over the years in the mission field, my mom had a deal with her patients:  "If I'm on call when you deliver, I'll be there to deliver your baby.  If I'm not on call and you want me to be the one to deliver your baby, you pay $100 more for me to come."  That $100 in Malaysia was equivalent to about $35 in the United States, so it was minimal.

Patients were thrilled with the deal, and so was my mom.  That money was her "investment money," which she saved to buy grand pianos for the local church, the worship/lecture hall in the mission hospital, and several other mission locations.  That investment money bought typewriters for a boarding school in Indonesia, as I recall, and possibly beds for their dorm rooms as well.  (With all the various projects and the passage of time, my memory has gotten a bit fuzzy.) That investment money from deliveries off-call was Mama's "fun money" to do whatever project she wanted to do.

So the thought of my mom and pianos always brings me around to the other treasure she gave me before she ever gave me a piano:  a commitment to open-heartedness and "open-pocketedness" to help others in need.  I have my own little "investment money" fund now, and the fun of looking for God's/my next project is greater than I can express.

When I think of what I would most regret losing, should the "moths and rust and burglars" get it, my piano would be the first possession I'd miss, not because of its value, but because of all of this which it symbolizes.

Thank you, Mama!