Your Heart is Where Your Treasure Is

from Wellspring by Anthony De Mello

God says, “Give me your heart.” And then, in answer to my puzzlement, I hear him say, “Your heart is where your treasure is.”

My treasures—here they are:

persons … places … occupations … things … experiences of the past …

the future’s hopes and dreams.

I pick each treasure up, say something to it, and place it in the presence of the Lord. How shall I “give” these treasures to him?

In the measure that my heart is in past treasures I am fossilized and dead, for life is only in the present. So to each of those past treasures, those golden yesterdays, I say goodbye.

To each I speak, explaining that, grateful though I am that it came into my life, it must move out — or my heart will never learn to love the present.

My heart is in the future too. Its anxious fears of what will be tomorrow leave little energy to fully live what is today. I list these fears and say to each, “Let the will of God be done,” observing what effect this has on me, knowing in my heart that God can only will my good. My heart is in my dreams, ideals, hopes, which make me live in future fiction.

To each of these I say, “Let the will of God be done, Let him dispose of you as he sees fit.”

Having reclaimed the portion of my heart that was captured by the future and the past, I now survey my present treasures.

To each beloved person I say with tenderness, “You are so precious to me, but you are not my life. I have a life to live, a destiny to meet that is separate from you.”

I say to places … things … I am attached to, “Precious you are, but not my life. My life and destiny are separate from you.”

I say this to the things that seem to constitute my very being: my health, my ideologies, my good name, reputation, and I say it even to my life, which must succumb someday to death, “You are desirable and precious, but you are not my life. My life and destiny are separate from you.”

At last I stand alone before the Lord. To him I give my heart. I say, “You, Lord, are my life. You are my destiny.”