Treasure Hunters

 

On this glorious September afternoon, I was outside picking the last of a good pea crop, when I noticed two range rovers parked inside the field that surrounds our house. Two men, equipped with metal detectors, walked carefully through the harvested field. Up and down, up and down.  Headsets on, waving these sensitive wands above the surface of the field.

A couple of miles away stands a hill, on which a famous battle was fought during Mary Queen of Scots’ reign. The Battle of Corrichie. Undoubtedly, troops would have traversed this area, both before, in anxious hope, and after, in fearful flight, perhaps, or in aggressive chase.

Scotland has a long history. The Romans went through this area before all the tumult of the last several hundred years. Anything could lie beneath the surface.

Intriguing, but I was a little concerned about who these two guys were, who had so audaciously parked their big cars in the field. Eventually one came over and addressed me by name. I hadn’t recognised him: it was the laird, the landowner on whose estate our modest house sits. If anyone had the right to hunt for treasure here, it was him!

Hunt for treasure. Kris Vallotton encourages Christians to ‘call out the gold’ in one another. To look past the dirt and the muck and expect to find gold in other peoples’ hearts. We are made in the image of God. We each have treasure within us, put there by our Father. Sometimes we are so modest and lacking in self-esteem that we need another person to notice, and to ‘call out the gold’. To help one other become all that God intends us to become.

It’s a challenge to us all, to look at others and see them as God sees them, through Holy Spirit specs, so that we can call out the gold. I want to be that encourager this week, don’t you?