Writing each day this Twelvetide I have been learning things. Here is one of them: there is treasure to be found when we begin to look.
Have you ever lost something only to find it waiting quietly for you in a really obvious place? Sometimes treasures are like that, sitting in plain sight, but somehow we miss them.
Jesus describes the Kingdom of Heaven in The Parable of the Hidden Treasure in Matthew chapter 13. He says it is:
“like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
He also compares it to a costly pearl:
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it”.
Could it be that the greatest treasure, the Kingdom of God, has been waiting for us in the darkness all along? Waiting for us, as R. S. Thomas put it, to turn aside to the miracle and find it?
The Bright Field’, by R. S. Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
