Living Monstrance

At my first job as a young engineer, I had the privilege to work with some very smart and talented engineers from MIT at a company in Cambridge, Mass.  I got to work on very advanced technical projects that I couldn’t explain to my family and friends.  It was literally rocket science.

When I got an office of my own, I was located next to an older British man who had more years of technical experience than I had been alive.  One day I stopped by and pointed out a photograph on his wall.  “There it is,” I said.  The photo was a 5-year-old snapshot of 5 engineers and a program manager standing around this brand-new, just completed prototype thing-a-ma-jig.  “Ah, yes, the turboalternator,” he replied.  It was shiny in some places, round in others, and pretty large.  It was an invention that had never been done before, that had more patents to it than people working on it.  It was going to go into a brand-new all-electric racecar made by one of the Big-3 American automotive manufacturers.  It was the center of attention of the whole company at the time.  And the project had made national attention.

But right when the project was close to completion, the Big-3 company suddenly canceled it.  As I spoke with my friend, the invention was sitting on a shelf in the basement, collecting dust.  It was never used again.

The team worked so hard on that project: nights, weekends, you name it.  They put their whole heart into it.  And for what?  It came to nothing.

Gazing at the picture, my British friend sighed and said, as I’ll never forget, “It all seemed so important back then.”

What do you put your whole heart into?  What do you put into your heart?  What is important?

Mary put her whole Heart into God’s Word and she kept His Word in her Heart.  Why?  She understood what was really important.  She knew that “heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Mt 24:35)

What do you keep in your heart?