Over the last 18 months of my life, I can truly say that the definitions of life, love, passion, cause, purpose have all been rewritten. A painful process, but the kind of pain that comes from stretching muscles to the limit. The kind of pain that comes from recuperating from a surgery. The kind of pain that tells you it may hurt now, but it will not hurt forever!
So in that, you begin to look for little joys that you probably have never done before. I would like to share with you one of those times. 4 months ago, I took my 9 year old daughter and 4 year old son for a walk. We started off walking on the cart path of a local golf course. (If you know me, you know that I am NOT a golfer…therefore I would like to publicly apologize for walking on the course, I didn’t know that was not allowed. I am sorry!)
Now on the inside I was quietly hoping that we would find a golf ball or two left over from the last several fall outings of 2016. Can I just share with you that not only did we find a golf ball, but we found 9 golf balls. None of them were on the fairways, the green, the tee boxes – not a one. All of them were found in the rough, the weeds, the woods, far away places from the playable grass of the course. But what joy we felt, as we climbed under trunks of fallen trees, moved aside piles of old thatch, and weeds that were just waiting for warmer weather. As we walked home, having stood all of the cold we face, the joy that my son and daughter and I had. Oh they were dirty and crusty, but the joy just continued as we cleaned this little white golf balls as if they were pearls harvested from the ocean. Oh, the joy!
As my family continues on in our journey of “next steps”, I think of that little excursion to the golf course. I just wanted to find one little golf ball, but as we found the one, the search intensified, and we found 9… My hearts turns to the scripture and the words of Jesus…
Matt. 13:44-46, “44 The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.45 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. 46 When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!”
Now let me assure you, I am pretty sure these little “pearls” we found only have a value of about $2.00 a piece maybe if they were brand new… But the lesson is surreal and powerful! Life may not be what you or I think it should be right now, but there are little pearls that the Father has hidden along the way, and sometime the way is not the “normal playable surface”, it is in the rough, it is in the hidden places of the world, it in the torn down branches of your world. But as I am finding, the world around me is small and normal, but the world that I have looked at for so long is so big and ready to search out the pearls that our Heavenly Father has laid out for them to find! I only wanted to find one pearl, we found 9! He is such a “GOOD, GOOD FATHER!” He gives extravagantly, He is generous, and gives out of His abundance!
So how about it? Will you join the Father on getting off the beaten path, the playable surfaces, and get out in the rough and the hidden places to find some pearls? They are there, you have to just take a risk and take a chance, don’t be afraid to dream about the pearls that He has for you!
There you will find joy! There you will find peace! There you will find Him!