I was watching this special episode of “Cops” tonight (go ahead…laugh!)…it was a special about NOPD dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. So this one officer that the camera was following went into his own house, and it was a disaster…furniture smashed up against walls, walls green with mold where water had been…a mess. He was salvaging some pictures off the walls, and he said something like how he was glad that his wife wasn’t there to see it, because all of their dreams had been built there and to see the devastation would have been more than she could bear.
I guess I started thinking about building dreams. I have the worst habit of building my dreams on financial stability and professional success. I concern myself a lot with my bank accounts, investments, and where I’m going to get published. Sometimes I forget why God called me to write in the first place…to reach people, to encourage people, to communicate Him. That’s where my dreams should be built, not in how much money I get from it all. Being a grad student has been good for me, because my income is about a quarter of what it once was, and it’s forced me to be less materialistic. Funny how God works, isn’t it?
Jesus reminded us that, “…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34, NKJV). The place where we are focused is where we will build our dreams. God wants us to focus on Him, and build our dreams there, to invest in what will last forever, not what will go away in a few years.
I guess I build my spiritual dreams on investments that have a low expectancy of return, when I could just as easily invest them into something with a huge rate of return. If that were my retirement portfolio, it would be a no-brainer.
But I guess that, spiritually, it is my retirement portfolio, isn’t it?
I hope I retire well, don’t you?