“In the beginning God created.” As Creator, everything belongs to Him. All treasure is His. Light, life and love all come from Him. He is the giver of every good gift. God gave to His Son what His Son treasured – He gave you and me to Him. Then He came into this world as the good Shepherd of those who had been given to Him. When He came, “He was rich,” while you and I were poor, miserable, wretched and blind. Loving us and being our Shepherd, “for [our] sakes He became poor, that [we] through His poverty might be rich.” God gave for us His chief treasure, who became poor, that we might have Him as our treasure and be rich. From the fullness of Him who is our treasure we have received grace upon grace (gift upon gift), for we have been given life, rightousness, heaven, glory, a perfect bridegroom, rest, peace and most of all Himself – a perfect object to satisfy the heart for time and through eternity. May we be warned: Satan, by contrast, is a thief who has come “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” He has no treasure to give. He sought to steal and kill and destroy our Shepherd. He failed. While he cannot steal us from the Shepherd, our Treasure, he seeks to deceive our hearts to rob us of the enjoyment of our Treasure, to kill our desires for the true riches, and to destroy our fruitfulness for God. May we live each day right beside our Shepherd with our eye upon Him.