Treasures Termites Destroy

It's Sunday night here in the Philippines. We had a wonderful weekend of reading and playing instruments and having people over. Our home is finally coming together to where we can have company--so come on over for a visit!

Our dinner guests were actually translators and were telling us how they just got back from the U.S. They have had their stuff in storage for one-and-a-half years, so they just uncovered it. When they opened the room with all their cardboard boxes thousands and thousands of termites covered their possessions in a haze. When they lifted one box all the critters disappeared into holes. They have had the trouble of finding many things eaten, like a graduation tassel, pictures, cardboard boxes, etc. They also found that the sticky fluid that termites leave was left all over their stuff, sealing plates together and ruining picture frames.

We told them about our finding the other week--we moved the piano (on loan to us from a Korean family). We were going to do a routine annual cleaning behind the furniture when we found a pile of sawdust behind the piano. It turned out that the buk-buk (wood mites) were living in the piano and were eating a hole out of the back of the piano! What a discovery! What are we supposed to do about that (the Filipinos have a solution they told me about).

Well our guests told us that the Cebuano translation of the verse Matthew 6.19 actually uses the word "termites" instead of "moths" It truly is a vivid picture for Filipinos and those of us living here that things on earth are temporary.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy or where theives break in and steal.

Cebuano translation: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where termites and rust destroy..."

Certainly we must store up treasure in heaven!