Today's PAYG was very thought-provoking for me, asking the listener to identify what (specficilly) possessions they valued and then, after a suitable pause, whether they thought these might still be the same in five years time.

Like a lot of people, I suspect, I trotted off things like photos, Holly Cat (is she a possession?!), my laptop, etc. 

And in five years time...? Will I actually have even looked at the photos - I have hundreds of unsorted prints in drawers waiting for me to do something with them.  Holly Cat - well I hope she's still brightening my life five years from now, but she'll be quite an old lady if she is.  My laptop - will almost certainly have been replaced, it's already nearly five years old as it is!!

What if I look backwards five years... a print of a painting that I treasured having bought it to mark my ordination got lost in transit north and I've never replaced it, so was it not so precious after all?  It's sometimes only when we no longer have things we realise how much, or how little, they actually meant to us.

Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.  If nothing else, I have learned over the years to hold material things more lightly and to treasure relationships and memories more dearly. 

In five year's time... well no-one can guarantee that, so let's be positive and assume it will happen... in five year's time I will be treasuring the moments shared, the ministry and mission exercised, the grace and love of God... and looking forward to the day, by then only ~18 months into the future (10 year follow up in Scotland), when I get am finally discharged by the hospital as NEDy as it gets!  And I expect all those photos will still be in the same drawer waiting to be sorted!

Where is my treasure?  Not, I hope in things per se, but in the loving and laughing, struggling and achieving that is life in all its fulness.