Treasure Seeking

[HKHaugan]

Treasure Seeking

        Moosehead Lake, a 40-mile-long natural mountain lake 1300 ft. above sea level, in Maine, is one of the really beautiful lakes in that multi-lake state.  It has island after island you can canoe to and camp on.  It holds the unique treasure fishermen know as freshwater salmon.  The fishing is really wonderful even though it takes some very challenging outdoor smarts to get the fish.  Most of its shoreline is real wilderness.  Deer, moose and occasional bear can be seen edging along the shore in the early morning.   When my boys were in their teens, we camped on its islands.  The lake is a majestic scene of an architect’s work designed to touch anyone’s openness to the real meaning of beauty.  If you are in a canoe and just moseying along, the breaking a.m. light opens your eyes to a glassy calm surface with an occasional ripple from a darting fish or the unexpected eruption of a salmon surging toward a fallen bug. 

       Now this picture is one that draws you to wish you could live there just to have these experiences of nature in the raw, the exhilaration of what you grasp as God’s hand having made something for you to enjoy.  Some people call Moosehead Lake ‘a piece of Heaven.’  It is a treasure.  This is the opposite of your everyday experience where you live.  You know, the hustle of traffic.  The reality of the broken world.  The constant emotional demands.  Just surviving the flurry of TV images depicting issues over which you have no control.  The challenges of work, family and community, living in general.  But here in Maine, on this lake, floating along, hmmm.  Wouldn’t it be great to be here all the time?  If you think about it you can substitute any place that fits your personal fancy for escape, the mountains, the beach, cruises, travel, whatever. 

       But there is a bottom line here.  You and me.  We can’t escape ourselves, the ‘I’ in us.   What is it we really want that prompts us to consider a change?  For those who have followed their momentary desires, the move didn’t produce that sought after peaceful encounter.  You still have to physically adapt, socially adapt, personally adapt.  You are still you.  The place may change but you don’t.  The people may change but living with them doesn’t. It’s really a heart thing isn’t it?  It’s the hope that some thing, place, experience, will be the satisfaction of an inner longing, a heart longing.

       When something comes along that makes sense you want more of it and all that is connected to it.  Unlike your physical geography, it could very well be where you are within.  If it is an insight, the discovery of something that can make a situation better, an illustration that makes a point, a task that seems to fit you, you want more.  They touched the heart the moment they were experienced.  They were special.  They were a gift for the moment of need.  You treasure them.  But it is the ultimate satisfaction we are really looking for.  An ultimate feeling that doesn’t end.  The real treasure.

       Now we are getting down to it.  The real treasure is what a relationship with Jesus is all about.  It’s someone, not something, that hits the inner spot.  You hide it in your heart and go after all that is like it because it never stays the same.  It’s always something new.  It’s not like everything turns totally calm like the early morning lake experience.  Rather, it is the realization that the same lake also has storms that bring waves, thunder, lightning and freezing rain and threaten your very life if you’re caught out in the turbulence.  And there is a winter of ice and snow with temps that go down way below zero.  Those are when the treasure turns into a nightmare of sheer survival. 

       So, it’s not the external environment that is the treasure.  It is the treasure the heart finds that stabilizes how you handle your experiences.  The relational treasure that gives you endurance through the world of people in which we live.   The relationship with Jesus is the treasure, the living treasure, and the field is our consciousness of His presence every next moment.  That’s where He sends the Holy Spirit to guide us from one moment to the next, from one day to the next.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, hope, love and faith leading us in a field of promises and their fulfillment lying before us.  They are relational with Him and from Him.   The field lies open waiting to be tilled. 

       This spiritual treasure is two dimensional; first, our relationship with the Lord and second, the world into which we have been called to relate, witness and multiply.  The first gives us our spiritual direction and the second is the work to which He has called us.  Jesus speaks to what true treasure is when He says, “Do not store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mt.6:19-21).”

       What we discover about Maine and its comparisons is that they are gifts for the moment.  Gifts that remind us of who created it all for us to enjoy.  They are times of rest, renewal, reinvigorating praise and thanks for the real treasure, our relationship with Almighty God through His Son Jesus.  It was through Him that all things were created and in whom the treasure of eternal life in His Kingdom awaits us.  Furthermore, this is a treasure we can share through the experiences we have been given here on this planet.  Our personal experiences are part of our testimony about Him.  Our temporary events of seeing and feeling beauty in outdoors and the indoors with people are the substance of our personal witness.  “So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).”

       Perhaps now, we can fathom those two brief parables of Jesus about hidden treasure, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.  Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant looking for pearls.  When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it (Mt.13:44-46).”  Not only do the two men experience something new, exciting and personal, but they get their head straight.  They put their hearts and souls into what they have found.

       For me, the field is the world you can’t see, the spiritual reality within what you can see.  In that field are the images of God Himself, the people He has created, the spiritual family of which we are all a part.   The pearl is the unique Son of God who makes the Father and the Spirit known.  He is the door to the Kingdom of God, the perfection of God’s spiritual reality. 

       Perhaps you can fathom the meaning of the field and the pearl from your spiritual experience.  For some it may be a realization of the Father who loves each of us in a way no human father could.  It could be His strong hand in the day-to-day decisions with which you are faced.  If it is the Holy Spirit and the way He opens the mind and heart to seeing the spiritual dimension in a new way, you have an eternal treasure.  The gifts He empowers you with to help others or the way He moves you to think spiritually about everything.