Ep 67: Worthless Cardboard

0:00 Well, good morning, I'm Daniel Dalp and this is for your Sunday Morning drive, the short podcast with the goal of providing you with some motivation, some drive and encouragement on your way to worship and helping you recenter your mind on those spiritual things on a hectic Sunday morning. We are brought to you by the Ministry League network of podcasts. Ministry League offers many great resources for the church, all of them free, and all of them are available at ministryleague.com or on their app. I certainly appreciate you writing a along with us this morning and we're making time out of your week to give us a listen. And it would mean so much if you took some time to review and rate the podcast wherever you listen. Let's go ahead and get the show on the road today.

0:41 This is episode 67. Worthless Cardboard. Let's go to church. Are we there yet? Recently, I've been selling off a lot of the nostalgic things from my childhood. You know, an action figure here, a comic book there, maybe a trading card or two. And if you grew up like me in the 90s, chances are you had a good stash of Pokémon cards. I had a stockpile so I pulled out my old binder the other day and I was looking for the rare cards so that I could sell them, but they were nowhere to be found. I spent weeks trying to figure out where they could have gone. Had I perhaps been burgled in the late 90s by some card hungry ruffian?

1:41 Had I given them away and just forgotten about it? Or did I hide them somewhere and just lose them over the years? But then I remembered I had an old fire safe in the basement that I had lost the keys to and I hadn't opened in probably about a decade. Surely, I thought, that is where my treasure resided. And the more I thought about getting that safe open, the more sure I was that great riches lay inside. After all, some of those cards sell for thousands of dollars, and I went through the trouble of keeping them for over 26 years. Surely by now they're worth a well. I called a locksmith or two, I tried picking the lock myself, and eventually I resorted just to drilling it out.

2:25 And I was right. The elusive Pokémon cards were there. But much to my dismay, when I began to research their value, well, let's just say I'm not going to be retiring anytime soon. These things that I had foolishly gotten my hopes up for, this treasure, these 20 something year old pieces of cardboard? Relatively worthless. Certainly they didn't hold the value that I had put upon them, but isn't that ultimately the truth for all of our worldly possessions? And sure, that might be depressing to us on some level, but the old saying is true. We can't take it with us. And those things, they are so fleeting and they just aren't as valuable as we think they are.

3:06 But man, don't we spend so much of our lives obtaining and then clinging on to them? You know, I held on to those worthless pieces of paper for almost 30 years, thinking of the wealth that they might someday bring to me. And I'm not too proud of this, but I spent a not too insignificant time mourning the realization of their worthlessness. And I suppose that makes the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 all the more insightful and applicable to our lives. Matthew chapter 619 through 21 says do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy, and where thieves do not break in or steal.

3:55 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. You see, Jesus knows what's important, what we should truly treasure, what we should spend our lives seeking and slaving over, the things that we should cling to. And it's not some worthless pieces of cardboard or gold or jewels. It's a home with Him in heaven and friends, nothing could be more valuable than that. Well, those are my thoughts for your Sunday morning drive. Now it's time to hear yours. And don't forget you can always give your responses to our discussion questions at foryoursundaymorningdrive.com. Our discussion questions for this week are what do you treasure and do you put more value on things of this world or the things of the next?