Hidden Treasure
Princes persecute me without a cause, but my heart stands in awe of Your word. I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure. I hate and abhor lying, but I love Your law. – Psalm 119:161-162.
This morning on “Good Morning America”, I watched a story about Baptist students from Armstrong Atlantic State University in Georgia on spring break. The unusual part of the story was that they were spending their break cleaning up houses that had been flooded by the hurricane. The very unusual part of this story was that one of the girls had found $30,000 in a closet when a vent came apart.
Trista Wright, the 19-year-old college student who found the money said, “I started raking it out of the air conditioner vent. I thought it was garbage and I was going to shovel it up, but I bent down to pick it up, and it was a stack of $100 bills, and then more and more kept coming.”
The money was in good condition and the owner who was out in the yard had no idea the money was there. The owner was needless to say very thrilled, “speechless” according to Wright, and the money is definitely needed to help restore the home. Since the home has been in the family for generations it is thought that the money was hidden by the current owner’s father. Since her father had gone through the depression, he had a distrust of banks. (Thanks to Bruce Andis for sending me the link to the story!)
Can you imagine having thousands of dollars unknown to you lying hidden in your home? If you had not personally hidden the money, it would surely be a great shock for it to be discovered! Just think about it – hidden treasure in your home, unknown, and undiscovered for years and years. In the case of the woman whose home was damaged by the hurricane it must be an even more special find because of her great need and that it was found in her own home. We can only marvel and praise God for having moved to help this woman in her hour of need.
Actually, there may be hidden treasure in your home. Where? you may think, and how would you know? Because for many families across the world they have the very same type of treasure but are not making use of it. The treasure is just laying there waiting for someone to pick it up. What is this treasure? It is the Bible. The words of God are a priceless treasure.
The Psalmist says it well when he says, “I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure.”
For surely to have access to the very words of God, the Creator of everything, is a fantastic treasure!
Did you know that there may be another hidden treasure in your home? What you may be thinking could that possibly be? That second hidden treasure is found in being obedient to the words of the first treasure.
As Isaiah put it in Isaiah 33:6, “Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, and the strength of salvation; the fear of the LORD is His treasure.”
There is one final treasure that you may not have realized that you possess. It is not inside your home unless you are inside your home because this treasure is inside of you. As the apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:7-11, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” If you know Jesus as your personal Savior then through the Holy Spirit you have the life of Jesus being “manifested” in your body.
It may be that some of us need to go and find our treasure! What a wonderful treasure trove we have been given!
(You may have a hidden treasure trove inside of your own home!)