God's Gems - September 15, 2011

Good Thursday morning! There is something wonderful and something gained in the precious Word of God! In this life we feel the urge to look for the hidden treasure. People comb beaches after a storm, walk parks with metal detectors, take off for the hills to pan for gold, and search yard sales trying to find that hidden or overlooked treasure. At times we may find success in these things, but as any veteran yard sale-or will tell you we will have to look through a ton or two of junk before we find any treasure. One place we are guaranteed to find hidden treasure is in the Word of God.

The Bible starts off with a treasure you are familiar with: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Gems are hidden throughout the 66 books of text. Not that all scripture is not valuable to each of us, but that each of us will see a brighter light in some verses because of the uniqueness God put into his creations. Your experiences in this life have been different from mine. The verse that speaks loudly to me, may not mean as much to you. However, both of us are guaranteed to find what we seek in God's Word!

Once, I tried to hold up the lengthy genealogies in the Bible as an example of scripture that may not have the value of some other verses. And to me a verse like John 3:16 is more of an eye opener than some of those 'begot' verses. As I was reading a book on the history of the westward expansion of the United States, I came to the story of Independence Rock. This rock is a place, a pile of rocks, that marks the point on the Oregon Trail where pioneers hoped, well, actually needed, to be in order to make it over the mountains before winter closed the high passes of the Rockies. To mark the point, someone carved his or her name into the soft sandstone and others followed suit until an extensive record of names has been left there. Now why do you think people would travel out there today to see the names of people long past? Right, to see if they can spot one that has a connection to themselves. Suddenly one reason for all those begats and begots becomes clear to me. Someone working their family line back from this end might even make a distant connection to a genealogy in the Bible; now wouldn't that be special!

You have the urge to seek treasure within you. Let the Holy Spirit direct you to the one place you are sure to find some gems, the Word of God.

Bucky