You Can't take it with you...or can you?

     After working with Hospice families, I have a strong belief that by focusing more on Heaven, we may put our earthly life in better balance.  It is commonly felt by Hospice workers that people at end of life often have a longing for "Home." What can this mean to those of us who may have many years left to live?  Can we learn something from those who are going before us?

     When I first heard of this talk of Home, or Heaven,  I thought this was something elderly people knew from church language.  Many of us have heard the old hymns that mention phrases such as "angels coming for to carry me home"  I was surprised to discover that people who don't have any faith connections,also mention this aspect of "going home."  Some people even tell you which day they will be "going home," and often they then die on the day that they mentioned.

     Many years ago, after college, I began looking at Biblical scripture as a way to apply to my life in a more direct way.  I was struggling with whether I would stay in the field of Interior Design, or go to seminary.  I happened to find the following scripture:

    
     Don't store up treasure on earth where moth and rust can destroy, or where thieves break in and steal.  Instead lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.
     For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.                        Matthew 6:19-21


     As a agonized over the decision to leave a great job in Atlanta, and move to a new city in North Carolina with no friends or job, I wondered if I was crazy to consider this.  It surely made no sense.  To say I was scared was an understatement.  I really had no idea what I would learn at seminary, or exactly what I would do after that, but I thought about the scripture above.  

     About this same time I returned from a vacation to find that one of the young women in our Bible Study had died in a tragic car accident.  She had been stuck in traffic on the interstate when some machinery had come loose from the truck in front of her and caused her death.  There is of course no way to prepare for something this quick and unexpected.  She was such a peaceful and beautiful young woman, and it caused us all to look at our own lives and how it could have happened to us.

     For me I put the loss of a friend into my own personal decision and looked at the meaning behind the scripture.  The words seemed to be saying that there were some aspects of this life that did go with us to heaven.  To leave a successful job which pleased my parents, and was such a great opportunity, seemed wrong, but I decided to try life in a different way.  Even though I had no idea what the seminary experience would do for me, I felt if I were to die as a young person, I wanted whatever knowledge was there.  If I were to have my life end sooner than we tend to expect, I wanted the growth from seminary to go with me to heaven.  I felt I would grow in ways at seminary, that would create spiritual or eternal treasures.

      Going to seminary did bring opportunities of fulfillment and "riches" that were beyond what I had hoped.  My life has gone in directions I would never have imagined, and by asking God or Spirit to direct me for each step, life has been more than I could have dreamed.  I have chosen the spiritual path.

     Not everyone who chooses to look for God's direction ends up going to seminary to become a minister.  A spiritual path could be someone deciding to leave seminary and go to study Interior Design.  God may take them in an opposite way from where I was to go. I don't know what anyone elses path is to be, I only know that after 25 years of asking God which way to go, I have found riches beyond imagination.  Before if I thought of someone who was rich I had limited images of money, houses, or certain cars.  Now I know that the these don't even compare to what God has in mind.  I guess I now believe that "You can take it with you."  You just have to think about which treasures will "follow us home."