So glad you can join me for today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Tim Gustafson wrote today's reading, and he titled it The Payoff.

In 1921, artist Sam Rodia began construction of his Watts Towers.

33 years later, 17 sculptures rose as high as

30 meters over Los Angeles. Musician Jerry Garcia was dismissive of Rodia's life work.

That's the payoff, said Garcia, that thing that exists after you're dead. Then he said,

wow, that's not it for me. So what was the payoff for him?

His bandmate Bob Weir summed up their philosophy. In eternity, nothing will be remembered of you,

so why not just have fun? A wealthy wise man once tried to find the payoff by doing everything

he possibly could.

He wrote in Ecclesiastes chapter 2, I said to myself,

Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.

But he noted,

The wise, like the fool, will not be long remembered.

He concluded, the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.

The life and message of Jesus radically counter such short-sighted living. Jesus came to give us

life to the full and taught us to live this life with the next one in view. Do not store up for

yourselves treasures on earth, he said in Matthew chapter. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,

he said in Matthew 6,

but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

Then he summed it up,

seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness,

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