Treasures in Heaven Final Sunday!

Dear Friends,

I've really enjoyed our "Treasure in Heaven" sermon series. It's been fun to pull things out of the treasure chest to share with you (and I'm grateful to Jennifer Carter for procuring it for us). The honey, the hospital gown, the "For God" envelope, and the overflowing chalice are all stories of the amazing work God is doing here at St. Andrew's.

I'm excited to pull a few more treasures out of the chest this Sunday. These are good and true stories, testimonies of the treasure in heaven that we are building in this place. I want you to see them.

This week is a little different though. Not only am I going to pull things out of the treasure chest, we're all going to get to put things in. We will collect our 2022 Intention of Giving cards in the treasure chest during the service (or you can submit yours online). With them we will continue our work of building treasure in heaven by transforming lives, both at St. Andrew's and in our broader community. We'll enact the metaphor of how generosity turns into treasure in heaven.

But if we were fully to act out this metaphor, we'd all need actually climb in the treasure chest ourselves. The financial stewardship piece is surely important – but there's not a treasure I've pulled out of that box that we could have paid for simply with a credit card. It all depends on people giving of themselves.

The cedar treasure chest won't fit us all though, so we'll just have to climb into the Great Hall together instead (or online, if you need to join us that way). That's not a bad image of the church gathered on Sunday actually: God's box full of treasures, ready to go out and make treasure in heaven.

In Christ,

Fr. Andrew