treasure of Jesus

What can I do,

How can I live?

To show my World,

The Treasure of Jesus.

What will it take,

What can I give?

So they can know,

The treasure He is

And if I can sing,

Let my songs be full of His glory,

If I can speak,

Let all my words, be full of His grace

And if I live, or die,

Let me be found pursuing this prize

The One that alone satisfies

The Treasure of Jesus

–Steven Curtis Chapman

It was with that song, along with a video (you can watch it a few posts down) that they began the Together For Adoption 2009 conference Friday night. (Worthy of note: the Church that hosted the event was Steven Curtis Chapman’s church. Also worthy of note: It had the rather unconventional name, Christ Community Church. Hmm.)

It was really rather appropriate. Not only because that particular video always makes me well up, (I’m going to watch it again now) but it asks the question that every Christian will ask; and orphan care is just one way of answering.

Of course, there are scarier questions we may ask. How much am I willing to do? How much am I willing to give? Really, in our day, where we live, we have to sacrifice a lot it seems to if we really want to present Christ, and what we say He means to us (I think of Hudson Taylor). It’s pretty easy to say we’re  Christians; nobody’s going to hurt us for that. But how do we show that, to us, it’s more than a name?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that our sufficiency is not of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of Christ.

Orphan care is an answer (not the answer, by any stretch). Like that video says, Christ’s work has freed us to reach out to the fatherless, the widow, and the greatest of all, we been given the freedom, the right, the duty, to share His Love with all people.  Let us not be content with just another conference, another pep rally, and what one man once refered to as “undigested resolutions.” Let us first treasure Jesus. If we don’t have Him, all our evangelism, all our orphan care, all our ministry will be but wood, hay and stubble in the day of the Lord. If He alone is our pearl of great price, and all other treasures (for there will be others, as He pleases) will receive their lustre from Him, then even if we break ourselves down attempting to do good, and don’t seem to get any where, our righteous King will look on the labour of love as precious gems. What a marvelous Saviour we have! Can we truly be satisfied that any should perish without calling them to come? (believe me, I speak as a fool).

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