An inheritance that cannot fade

Far beneath a bank, behind a door of hardened steel a foot thick, lies the vault, fireproof, flood-proof, drill-proof, climate-controlled and watched day and night. It is where people put the few things they cannot bear to lose, the deed, the ring, the irreplaceable thing, trusting all that steel to keep out flame and water and thief. Peter says God has set aside for you something kept far more securely than anything any vault on earth could promise. An inheritance, he calls it, incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, and reserved in heaven with your name already on it. Think back across all the upheaval has reached. It got at a great deal you valued; it took some things you would have given anything to keep. But there is one thing its hands never closed on, one thing the shaking could not get to, because it was never stored where the shaking happens. Jesus told us plainly where to keep our real treasure, precisely because earthly treasure is so easily lost, eaten by moths, gnawed by rust, carried off by thieves who break in. This treasure no moth can find.

The upheaval reached so much of what you valued. It is honest to grieve that. But hear the one thing it could not reach. Peter says God is keeping for you an inheritance that cannot rot, cannot be stained, cannot fade with age, held in heaven with your name on it. Whatever was lost in these years, whatever was taken from you, this was never in the path of the loss. The moth that got into so much else never found it. The rust that ate the rest never touched it. The thief who took what he took could not break into where it is kept. The earthquake that shook everything you could see did not so much as rattle it. And here is the deepest comfort: it is not diminished by what you have suffered. It has not shrunk by one degree because of all you went through. It is reserved, whole, undimmed, waiting, and one day you will walk in and come into it entire, exactly as kept.