treasure, island

what do church and robert louis stevenson have to do with each other? alot recently. i'm still looking for a regular place to fellowship so i haven't been in quite a while. but i went to a church last weekend and the sermon was about treasures in heaven which really lined up with what i'd been thinking, talking and praying about lately. it's not that stuff is bad, the message seems to be not to be anxious about it. and, as the main character jim hawkins notices in the classic treasure island, "is it really worth all this fighting for a chest or five of gold?" (you decide.) we have troubles here (so did the pirates and sailors) and, humorously, as the pastor noted, it's not as if Jesus was saying that nothing bad happens to the flowers and birds (see matthew 6). trying to come up with memorable lesson plans, i thought back to 5th grade when our teacher took us on an archaeological "dig". thing was, we were the ones who buried all the stuff in the first place, so it wasn't really surprising to dig it back up again. i always wondered what the point of that was. but the people in ancient Israel would have known that if you had valuable things, you put them in a box and buried them. in this case, definitely hoping you remembered where you dug. honestly, the more i study this passage, the more questions i have. along with a sneaking suspicion it can be a practical guide on how to live worry-free even if we're not all *hippies (*disclaimer, see also entry entitled "1974"). peace out, mateys.