Changing Values - The Warrior's Journey®
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Changing Values

Gimme Some Lovin'. Photo by U.S. Marine Corps is licensed under CC By 2.0

What do you really value the most?

In the late 1800s aluminum was considered a precious metal, perfect for fashioning the helmets and scepters for royalty. Like other precious metals, it did not rust. Unlike them, it was lightweight and strong, it was these qualities that made it a greatly desired, but rare and expensive commodity. But aluminum was not rare at all. In fact, it is one of the most abundant metals on earth. The trouble was, there existed no way of extracting aluminum ore from the ground.

Then, in 1886, two inventors, Charles Hall and Paul Heroult, discovered an inexpensive process of obtaining aluminum ore from the earth’s crust using electricity. Their process reduced the price of aluminum to less than 1% of its earlier cost and made it the third most used metal in industry – behind iron and steel. The sad part of the story is that aluminum has fallen from its status as a precious metal. Once it stood alongside gold, silver and platinum. Now it’s just a cheap building material.

Cav Soldier manipulates metal

Many material things, things that we once treasured, have decreased in value immensely. Information and technology advances are partly responsible for this.

Consider the following. The first marketed microwave oven, Raytheon’s “Radarange,” was 6 feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost $4000 in 1947. Today a small microwave can be purchased for less than $50. In 1976 a VCR would put you out $1600. Today you can pick up a new one for less than $50. Did you know that today a $10 computer chip can do what it took a $100,000 computer to do twenty years ago? Or, that the equivalent of an RCA Color TV in 1956 – then priced at $895 – today costs only about $199?

In all our earthly pursuits we should never neglect the things that truly define our lives and will never diminish in value.

The list goes on. But these examples are reason enough not to put too much faith in material things or to make them our heart’s desire. Family, friends and faith in our loving and saving God are the greatest assets any of us can have. These relationships are worthy of the investment of our time, resources, and devotion. In all our earthly pursuits we should never neglect the things that truly define our lives and will never diminish in value.

Our Lord warned that “…one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses,” (Luke 12:15, NKJV) and that life’s true treasures are those things that endure for eternity (John 6:27; Matthew 6:21).

PRAYER:

Dear Father, open my eyes to the true treasures I have in my spouse, my children and in You. Help me also, O God, to live with eternity’s values in mind. Amen.


Information from Uncle John’s Extraordinary Book of Facts

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