“Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” – Bible

When Albert Schweitzer was still a young man, he was a theology professor at a Swiss University and had recently won a prestigious award for his multi-volume book on Bach’s organ works. He was on top of the world.

But he was a Christian, and Jesus says many times in the gospels, “sell everything you have and minister to the poorest of the poor. Then your reward will be great in heaven.” So Schweitzer was in a quandary.

He prayed about it, asked himself where were the poorest of the poor. He concluded they were in Africa. He asked himself what they needed. Doctors. So he quit his job and enrolled in medical school. Then he began the process of fund-raising for the clinic he intended to establish in the Gabon.

All his colleagues at the University told him he was making a big mistake, that he was throwing away a brilliant career. Some of them gave him money. He finished medical school and his internship, bought the supplies for his clinic, and found himself slowly making his way up the Congo river, in a flotilla of canoes all paddled by naked black men. I imagine there were times on that trip when he wondered if his friends back home had been right.

Fortunately, he had bought an organ before he left Europe, and once they established the clinic and hospital he played that on his time off. The monkeys and tropical birds heard Bach being played on an organ that had to be pumped with a bellows in order to push air through the pipes.

He lived to be ninety. Here is a quote by him:

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.