Hello everyone, we are coming into land for the summer holidays and everyone is ready for a rest!
I don't know about you but I've been really enjoying our journey through Luke's gospel together, and have been reflecting on the words of Jesus, "for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also"
What do we value? What is precious and important to us? These are questions of the heart. And these are the questions Jesus is getting us to think about together in Luke's gospel.
St Augustine prays "Lord you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you."
This reminds us that we are made by God for a relationship of love with him. Jesus comes to restore that relationship, to bring our hearts back to him.
But if we can say that our hearts are resting in God - what will do that do for everything else we value, for the things we "treasure"?
Because the things we love also change us, for better or for worse. "We are what we love". Anyone who has seen their friend enter a relationship and watched them change, anyone who has watched a friend be consumed by a career, anyone who knows the effects of addiction - in all sorts of different ways the things we love alter who we are.
And so if God is who we love, if the Lord Jesus and his ways have "captured" our hearts, what will that do to who we are? How will that change us? How will it impact our other desires and the things we prioritise and why?
This is the theme of the beautiful ancient Irish hymn 'Be Thou My Vision'. Can we say these words and really mean them? "Riches I heed not nor man's empty praise, Thou mine inheritance now and always, Thou and Thou only the first in my heart, High King of Heaven, my treasure thou art."
Can we say these words and really mean them? And if we do, what will that mean for us this summer?
I hope you all manage to get some rest over the next couple of months!
Every blessing,
Jack
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