I’ve grown up and spent most of my life around gardens and I can tell you that it is WORK to store it. It means canning, blanching, or freezing. It means then processing and turning it into something. And that is all after you have spent months nurturing and growing and protect your plants from disease, bugs and weather issues of too dry or too wet.

But the result is good. Gotta love homemade salsa. It’s worth the effort.

Jesus says this:

“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, ⁴⁴ for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. ⁴⁵ The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

“The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good.”

Or as my translation says,

“The good man brings good things out of the stored up in his heart.”

It’s WORK to keep good things in our hearts. We read news every day that is difficult, discouraging and depressing. We fight the images that come across our screens that are ungodly and have no place in our minds, yet our eyes can’t unsee it all. Then we have reality of trying to make it. Groceries are ridiculously expensive and gas and everything is making it so much harder to live. People are stressed and relationships are tense.

How on earth do we “store up good in our hearts” with all this going on?

The first thing that comes to mind is worship. Worship gets our eyes off of our circumstances and onto God who is so much bigger than our problems.

Sometimes worship is a natural response of the gratitude we feel. Othertimes it is an intentional act and that is Ok. We need to create space for worship.

Another thought is that we be intentional. We live in a world where if we are not intentional, there is a buffet of not good things that we will be fed by force. Passive thinking and minds will be taken over.

There’s also being in the Word and in prayer. We need to daily be thinking the thoughts of God.

It’s a tough world out there. It is WORK to store up good things in our hearts when we are surrounded by so much distressing things. But we must fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

You Know what people do this well?

Some of the poorest people in the world who have suffered the most but they have Jesus and are full of joy because of it.

Lord, give me the ways of people like this.