Treasure before you lose it
This is a reflective piece about how Esau gave up his birthright long before it happened. Where your treasure lays that is also where your heart is. What Esau Teaches Us About the Things We Take for Granted
Wing It With Thought | Genesis: Foundations of Faith
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There’s a verse tucked in the Gospels that quietly explains a lot of human behaviour:
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21; Luke 12:34)
It sounds almost obvious.
But Genesis gives us a powerful illustration of what happens when it’s ignored and his name is Esau.
The Tragedy Wasn’t the Regret
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We usually tell Esau’s story as a cautionary tale about impulsiveness: trading his birthright for a bowl of stew, then weeping bitterly when he realised what it had cost him.
But that’s not really where the tragedy begins.
The tragedy isn’t that Esau realised too late what he’d lost. It’s that he never valued it while he still had it. By the time he wanted the birthright back, he wanted the blessing, the outcome, the inheritance, the status.
Nothing in Genesis suggests he had come to treasure the birthright itself.
In fact, Genesis quietly presents a pattern rather than a single bad decision.
First, Esau despises his birthright. Then, later, he marries two Hittite women, bringing grief to Isaac and Rebekah. Abraham had gone to extraordinary lengths to find Isaac a wife from within the covenant family, yet Esau appears to treat that heritage as something of little importance.
The writer never stops to say, “Esau didn’t value God’s promises.”
Instead, his choices tell the story.
Esau Isn’t as different as we’d like to think
Think about relationships.
Someone assumes their spouse, parents, children or friends will always be there. So they stop investing. Stop listening. Stop appreciating. They take them for granted because they’re “mine,” and mine feels permanent.
Then the relationship breaks down. Someone leaves. And suddenly, the value they never noticed becomes painfully clear.
The pain is real.
But the loss didn’t begin the day the person walked away. It began much earlier, the day they stopped treating that relationship as precious.
We do this in other areas of life too.
We assume there will always be another opportunity to pray, another chance to reconcile, another season to serve, another tomorrow to become the person God is calling us to be.
Sometimes there is.
Sometimes there isn’t.
The question Genesis Is really asking
Underneath Esau’s story is a question that reaches straight into our own lives:
What are we treating as common that God calls precious?
For Esau, it was the birthright and the covenant attached to it.
For us, it might be:
Our relationship with God
Our marriage
Our children
Our integrity
Our church family
The opportunities God has placed in front of us
Or even the time we’ve been given
We assume they’ll always be there.
Until one day, they aren’t.
What the Bible Doesn’t Say Out Loud
This is where it fits the heart of this series.
The Bible never says, “Don’t take God’s gifts for granted.”
It doesn’t need to.
Instead, it shows us Esau.
His life becomes the illustration.
So maybe the takeaway isn’t simply, “Don’t sell your birthright.”
Maybe it’s this:
Treasure what God has entrusted to you before you’re forced to discover its value through its absence.
That’s a lesson that reaches far beyond Esau’s story. It steps out of Genesis and into whatever is sitting quietly in your own life right now, half noticed, half appreciated, assumed to be permanent.
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So the question isn’t only, “What’s my bowl of stew?” the shortcut I might be tempted to trade something precious for.
It’s also:
What precious gift have I quietly started treating as ordinary?
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Jesus put it simply:
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Perhaps that’s why Genesis spends so little time analysing Esau’s heart.
It doesn’t have to.
His treasures reveal it.
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This is part of the How to hear what the Bible doesn't say out Loud Series
If you’d like to start noticing these patterns for yourself, I’ve created a free Bible Reading Guide (PDF)with simple questions to help you slow down, read more intentionally and discover the connections you may have been missing.
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