Your Greatest Treasure

It takes a lot of understanding, time and trust to gain a close friendship with someone. As I approach a time in my life of complete uncertainty, my family is my most precious asset.

I had a church member who felt that way. I sat next to his nursing home bed in Union, SC and thought about the fact that I had known him for over twelve  years. He  knew he was slowly dying and that these next few days would be his last. I held his hand as we talked at length.

We spent time reminiscing about his long and faithful voyage as a church member, father, and husband. We talked about familiar friends. We chatted about his wife who passed on several years before him. And I listened as he offered pieces of wisdom from an older generation that he felt needed to be passed on to my generation.

He seemed to carefully consider what he was about to say next. Then he squeezed my hand, gazed intently into my eyes and whispered, just loud enough for me to hear, "Pastor, nothing is more important than your family relationship."

I knew that this sentence somehow mattered a great deal to him. He seemed to consider a lifetime of experiences and this one simple observation surfaced above the rest: "Pastor, nothing is more important than  your family relationship."

"Don't get so caught up in your ministry," he said. "that you forget the people you love and the ones who love you back. No church, no program, or no task  is more important than your family. Keep Jesus first, but make sure you love you family as much as you can while you have the chance."

Remember," he repeated, "only your relationship with them will matter in the end. Tend to them well."

Writer Og Mandino put it this way: "Beginning today," he said, "treat everyone you meet as if he or she were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again."

In Galatians 5 an 6 Paul wrote:
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
²⁶ That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
²⁷ That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
²⁸ So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
²⁹ For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
³⁰ For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
³¹ For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
³² This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
³³ Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.
² Honor thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;
³ That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
⁴ And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Amen. Amen. Amen.