Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:19-21
In 1915, during Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica, his ship Endurance became trapped in pack ice in the Weddell Sea. Months later, crushing pressure forced Shackleton and his men to abandon the ship before it sank beneath the ice. What followed was an extraordinary struggle for survival, but remarkably, every member of the expedition lived.
In 2022, a team of researchers located the wreck of the Endurance nearly 10,000 feet beneath the surface. What they found was remarkable. Although the wooden ship had been resting on the ocean floor for more than one hundred years, it was extraordinarily well preserved. Its name was still clearly visible across the stern, and much of the vessel remained intact. In the near-freezing Antarctic waters, the wood-eating marine organisms that normally consume wooden shipwrecks cannot survive. Because the usual agents of decay were absent, the Endurance remained largely untouched for generations.
Nothing in this world is truly permanent, but everything in Heaven is perfect and unchanging. As Christians, we have the certain promise of a future in Heaven where nothing will ever decay and there will be no destructive elements to undermine what is there. “And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27).
The indestructible nature of what is in Heaven is why the eternal investments we make in this life can be counted on in the next. While Earth has thieves, insects, and rust that destroy what people treasure, Heaven has nothing like that. When we place our treasure and our heart there, we can be sure it is secure. God keeps safe all that we send ahead into His care.
