For Where Your Treasures Are

Written by Rosane Pereira February 2015

As a child, I loved to visit my grandmother Sabina’s small house in the mountains. My aunt Iota lived next door, so my sister and I would spend our days exploring with our cousins, going to the waterfall, swimming in the river that ran behind the property, or climbing the many mountains in the Mantigueira Ridge. It was heaven on earth for a city girl like me.

Their family didn’t have as much materially as ours did. Once, my cousin Anette said, “I may not be rich in things, but I am rich in my heart, and Grandma told me that is the most important!” That was a new thought for me. Was there another kind of riches other than material ones?

I also remember how impressed I was when my mother took me to see The Ten Commandments1 at a movie theater. Moses could have stayed in his comfort zone until the day he died, but he didn't — he left everything to free his people from oppression. It took me until adulthood to understand how much it must have cost him to follow God.

When I first read the Gospels, one of the stories that stood out to me was the one of the jeweler who discovered a pearl of great price and immediately sold all that he had in order to buy it.2 Jesus explained that this pearl was the kingdom of God, and when I read that, I felt a burning in my heart. I too wanted that pearl!

Jesus also taught: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”3 Being from a metropolitan beach city with a high crime rate, I understood that concept very well.

As I matured, I came to understand more clearly that true riches are not things of this earth; they are joy, peace, love, goodness, faith, and all the other real valuables that God wants to give each of us daily. Ours is the easy part, opening our souls to receive His gifts. If our treasures are in heaven, our hearts will be filled with happiness both now and in the life to come.

1. Cecil B. DeMille. Paramount Pictures, 1956.
2. See Matthew 13:45–46.
3. Matthew 6:19–21.

Rosane Pereira is Brazilian and has been a career missionary together with her late husband, Carlos Cordoba, since 1975. She has eight children and five grandchildren. Rosane is an English and Spanish teacher, translator, and writer. She has authored a book on faith titled: Proofs of His Presence, and is currently writing a second book titled: An Eternal Apprentice.
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"WE'RE ALL ONE IN CHRIST JESUS!" (GAL.3:28).

God's people are called out of every nation and religion on the face of the Earth to become one nation, one people under God.--Not just under Him, but in Him! All the millions of Saints throughout this Earth who know and believe in and love Jesus are part of the Kingdom of God.--Regardless of their race or color or creed or language or nation!

We, who have received Christ, are nothing but Christians in the realm of the Spirit! God doesn't see any fleshly characteristic! In spiritual things there's no longer any Jew nor Gentile, no male nor female, no Black nor White, no bond nor free! (Gal.3:28). "Man looketh upon the outward appearance, but God looketh upon the heart!" (1Sam.16:7). It's the color of the heart that counts!



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