Have you ever seen this bumper sticker?

HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS.

It's a sad statement. For anyone living by that philosophy, death is the greatest of all tragedies. At that point, everything he's lived for is gone.

Angus and Emma Brower, missionaries with whom I became acquainted in the early 1950s, did not look at life that way. With most of their support coming from one small church, they had no luxuries.

They were effective missionaries, but they were so unpretentious that they were not well-known. They owned little of material value, and they didn't care. A friend told me that in recent years they have been living in a retirement village, and their highest priority continues to be to please the Lord.

Jesus told a parable about a man who spent his life accumulating more and more wealth but had no time for God (Lk. 12:16-21). He was rich in life but bankrupt in death.

Death cannot rob people like the Browers of their true riches. Instead, it brings them into their indescribably glorious inheritance of the treasure they have waiting for them in heaven (v.33).

Where's your treasure?  — Herbert Vander Lugt