Store Up Treasures in Heaven

Highly valued occupations include: financiers, CEO’s of corporations, entertainers, including sports entertainers (the gladiators of today), and leaders. While devalued occupations include: care-taking, child-raising, food growers, nurses, teachers, waste collectors, and even community protectors like firefighters and police officers. We want the services, but we don’t want to put resources towards them.

How did we decide how much each occupation was worth? By the amount a person(s) is willing to pay for it. Therefore, we as a culture believe sports stars and movie stars and financiers and business moguls are most important. Next come politicians, doctors, lawyers and insurers. With politicians we pay for them to govern us, with doctors we value our health and fear illness and ultimately death. We value lawyers because our system is so intricate as to not make any sense, and finally, insurers – well, of course, we value them because we are afraid to lose what we have.

Photo byAnnie SprattonUnsplash

Why are not the child care-givers and teachers the wealthiest? Because we don’t value these occupations as much as being entertained or trusting someone to handle our money. We have built a whole culture on valuing our treasures on earth. We must let go of our attachments to this physical world and lifestyle and be willing to change.

We need food providers, shelter providers, clothing providers, educators, and health care providers – all else is above and beyond. We feed the machine every time we choose to think and act in terms of money exchanges – dollars, values assigned.

Highly valued commodities like homes, jewelry, cars, airplanes, travel, etc. – the ones who have more of these are given a modicum of “respect” and power. Those are the ones with the most power to influence others in this world. In fact, one cannot easily be an influence without it.

When did homemaking and child-rearing, i.e. “work” within the home become less valuable than work outside of the home? When did earning money become more valuable than caring for a child? Child rearing is for the next generation – every other activity we are involved in is for today and can easily be ashes to ashes and dust to dust by or before the next generation comes along.

Suffragettes were pioneering women who overcame a rigid system of control and fought for women’s right to vote, to have a voice in the world. They sought equal opportunity in education, work outside the home, and in leadership for women. In the 1970s the women’s liberation movement grew. If they perform equal work, they should receive equal pay. Women also wanted the freedom of choice to be able do whichever occupation they desired. Women want the same opportunities as men. Women want to have a voice, to have power, and to not be subjugated to men. The feminine has been devalued for way too long. The Divine is both masculine and feminine.

Both men and women focusing on fulfilling themselves through a career miss the mark. It is time to value those who serve both the common good and the Eternal over all else. Give one’s life to God in service without money or self-fulfillment seeking. It’s a change in thinking. Whether one is a woman or a man, one can make a difference in this world and make it a better place and this is a good thing, especially if one is doing it in the service of the Eternal, living as One with God and All Creation.

Somehow we get lost on the point of why we are working and the work somehow becomes who we are – women speak of fulfilling themselves through career and are happy to have a plethora of choices in comparison to women who lived just a generation ago. The opportunities are good, but we’ve come to a point where we need to step back and say we’ve come this far, now we need to raise up our feminine strength and allow the power of the feminine to flow into all our lives.

Seeking God, living for God has no dollar amount assigned. God is not a dollar value … yet needs to be the highest pursuit in this world. Instead of esteeming the earning of money and the accumulation of wealth, we could respect and value minimizing wealth. Honor the beggars, those who either by their choice or God’s will, live with nothing, or next to nothing.