Before any of you (especially our family) begin getting excited about any news as big as … say … expecting our first child, let me lower those expectations. We don’t even have a new pet (although I’d love a dog if we lived somewhere that would provide humane living conditions for one). But we did buy our first plant. And we completed our IKEA furniture collection with a buffet.

Have you ever noticed the way that getting one new furniture item quickly escalates to an entire home re-decorating project? Take the buffet as an example. Once we replaced the two bedside tables we’d made a makeshift “sideboard” out of with a real piece of furniture designed for its purpose, the whole room had to be rearranged. With the big sideboard/buffet piece, the pre-existing bookshelf really made the corner look too crowded. But to get rid of the bookshelf required Seth packing up 4-5 more boxes of books. And once the bookshelf was moved, the corner looked too empty. So we moved pictures around and rearranged the lamps. Only to realize that now we needed a plant in that corner.

So last Saturday, off to Home Depot we went to choose a plant. We found the perfect one with a pot we liked a lot. And once we set the plant up in its corner, we noticed that the lamps really look cheap … and now we’re in search of “the perfect lamps.”

Isn’t this life? Economics talks about a law of infinite need/desire. Advertisements and shopping malls play up this desire — elevating it to a “must-have need” when you find the “perfect” dress … which now will need “perfect” shoes to match and jewelry….etc. We as Americans buy into this too often. I’m including myself very much. And I’m wondering what it would really mean to gaze at eternity as the reality I’m living for and to use the “stuff” I’m given for eternal purposes. To better the world rather than build my little kingdom. To give away what I’ve been given instead of hoarding it.

That will require a holy imagination and eyes to see what’s yet unseen. A heart set on worshiping the real but invisible God. Desires kindled by the hope of redemption when Christ returns (a yet unseen reality) instead of by the “latest thing” we “need.” We’re far from seeing the world from this vantage point … but we will continue to seek that Kingdom.

What helps you to store up treasures in heaven rather than on earth?