Daily Devotional: Generosity & Stewardship: Storing Up the Right Things

OPEN HANDS

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Matthew 6:19-21

REFLECTION

Twenty-five years ago today, the world shook. And Jesus wept.

Not for the first time.

He wept at the tomb of Lazarus, standing among people who had lost someone they loved. He wept over Jerusalem when He saw a city that did not know what would bring it peace. Jesus is a Savior acquainted with sorrow, familiar with loss, and present in the darkest rooms of human experience.

And on September 11, 2001, He was there.

He was there in the final phone calls made to the people who mattered most. He heard every trembling I love you spoken by someone who knew time was running out. He was present with those who ran toward danger when every human instinct said to run away. He was with the families who waited. He held those who never came home.

And He has never looked away from the grief that day left behind.

Jesus knows what it is to watch the world break. He created it. He loves it. And He entered into it fully, not from a safe distance, but as One who experienced sorrow, suffering, rejection, and death Himself.

September 11 reminded us of something Jesus had been telling us all along.

• Life is fragile, far more fragile than we allow ourselves to believe on ordinary days.
• The things we spend so much time accumulating, protecting, and worrying about can disappear in a moment.
• But some things remain.

Love remains. Compassion remains. Sacrifice remains. A life poured out for another leaves a treasure tragedy cannot take away.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.”

Jesus did not say those words to make us afraid of living. He said them to set us free, free from the exhausting grip of trying to find security in things that were never meant to hold us. Free to invest ourselves in what cannot be taken away. Free to love with open hands rather than clutching what we have out of fear of losing it.

On that ordinary Tuesday morning twenty-five years ago, people ran toward smoke and fire. They were not calculating what they might gain or what it might cost them. In those moments, another person’s life became more important than their own safety.

It brings to mind the words of Jesus:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

John 15:13

That is the kind of love Christ calls His followers to practice, not only when tragedy strikes, but on ordinary days when no one is watching.

• To give before we are asked.
• To move toward the hurting rather than around them.
• To store our treasure in relationships, service, compassion, generosity, and the quiet daily acts of love that outlast everything this world can take.
• To live with open hands.

Because when our hearts are rooted in what is eternal, the temporary may be shaken, but we do not have to be destroyed by the shaking. Sometimes what is stripped away simply reveals what we were holding onto all along.

Twenty-five years later, families are still carrying the loss of September 11. Grief does not have an expiration date.

As followers of Jesus, we are called to carry some of that weight with them, not to fix it, not to explain it, but to remember, to honor, to sit with those who hurt, and to refuse to let those who still grieve feel forgotten.

That, too, is treasure in heaven.

It is the presence offered to someone in pain. The love that refuses to look away. The hand extended when there is nothing to gain in return.

It is Christ in us.

Today we remember. We grieve with those who grieve. We honor those who were lost and those who gave everything trying to save others.

And we allow this day to bring us back to the question Jesus has always been asking:

Where is your treasure?

Because where your treasure is, your heart will follow.

And in a broken and hurting world, perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer is a heart that has learned to love with open hands.

In light of what this day reminds us about the fragility of life and the permanence of love, where is your heart truly invested, and what is one specific way you will invest in what lasts today?

PRAYER

Lord Jesus,

You wept. You entered into the suffering of this broken world, and You still draw near to those who grieve.

Today we remember every life lost, every family forever changed, and those who courageously gave themselves trying to save others. Comfort those who still carry the grief. Hold what human hands cannot hold, and heal what time alone cannot heal.

And Lord, do a deep work in us.

Loosen our grip on the things that cannot last. Redirect our hearts toward the treasure no tragedy can take away. Make us people who love freely, give generously, move toward the hurting, and live with open hands.

May we not wait for tragedy to teach us how to love. Teach us to love today.

Help us to love well, give freely, and store our treasure in what is eternal.