Daily Devotional

This single verse lands like a verdict. Notice that the logic runs in both directions. It is not merely that your heart will follow wherever you put your money; it is that your money already reveals where your heart has gone. What you value determines what you invest in, and what you invest in then reinforces what you value. The two react upon each other until your bank statement becomes an honest record of your loves.

This is why Jesus presses the question so personally. If auditors examined your financial records, would they find evidence of a love for God? If our vacation and restaurant spending dwarfs our giving, what might that quietly signify about what we truly treasure? This is not a guilt trip. Jesus is not trying to shame you into giving more. He is holding up a mirror, because greed is deceptive and hides, and if we never stop to look at where our money and time and devotion actually go, we will remain blind to the fact that our hearts have drifted far from God.

The writer Grace Hammond describes the deeper sin under greed as avarice, a growing and even cultivated blindness to the needs of others in pursuit of the glittering mirage of our own desires. The danger of treasure in the wrong place is not only the money we may lose; it is that we lose the ability to see people clearly. We stop seeing our neighbor and start seeing our competition. The mirror Jesus offers is meant to wake us before that blindness sets fully in.