A Monthly Publication

By a Wayfarer

4  On the treasure trail

 What did you get for Christmas?  Was it what you wanted, expected, or even deserved?  I wonder how many  “presents” were actually thinly disguised bribes hoping to buy some affection from someone, or even improved behaviour from ungrateful children? I also wonder how many presents will soon cease to delight the recipient because they know of someone else who now has an even bigger or better one!  Were any of you naive enough to believe the sales pitch that assured you that if only you had got “x” - or whatever - your life would be fulfilled and perfect?  I also wonder how many kids will have been saying soon after Boxing Day  “I’m bored!”

While I was in Côte d’Ivoire, I didn’t actually meet any bored kids.  The kids I did meet were bubbly, exuberant and resourceful.  What they lacked in money they more than made up for in ingenuity.  Their playground ‘toys’ were improvised ropes made from old plastic bags, together with sticks, stones, old tin cans and bicycle tyres. Groups had also pooled their resources of expertise and from other old cans of all shapes and sizes had worked out how to make all manner of wheeled toys, cars, lorries, etc.  Their tools consist of nothing more than a big old knife for a spike and a large stone for a hammer. In the absence of tin-snips, metal is ‘cut’ into different shapes and sizes simply by repeated bending and flattening until it breaks. Rough edges are scraped on a stone until smooth.The carefully made resultant pieces of a variety of shapes and sizes, all held together with similarly home-made ‘clips’,  produced the sort of toys to delight any engineer!

Ivorian boys making toys

“There’s gold in them thar hills”- The lure of gold is so powerful that men have been irresistibly drawn from all over the world to the Klondike, California and Australia. Some undoubtedly made their fortune - but many did not and ended up either broken, ruined - or dead!

Fourteen years ago I met some very different miners - in the high Andes of Bolivia. Here were some of the poorest people in the world. The callous greed of multinational cartels had arbitrarily depressed the value of tin on the international Exchanges and literally rubbished the economy of Bolivia overnight. Thousands of miners whose livelihood depended on working for these big conglomerates were thrown out of work with no Social Security or dole money to fall back on. Many were faced with no choice but to mine on their own account in appalling conditions more like the stone age than the 21st century.

Scraping over the tailings and leavings of the commercial mines, they scavenged for marketable tin ore - but the catch was they could only sell it back to the big mine owners who had thrown them out of work in the first place. Oddly enough, here I me some of the most gentle, gracious people I have found anywhere.  Some of them had found the greatest treasure of all - such as the man in the picture. He may have had to climb several hundred feet from his very modest house in the mining town to reach his working area at an altitude of over 15,000 feet, but the treasure he had found was within him. He had met the Lord Jesus Christ and now is an elder in his local Church - a committed Christian whose radiant life is obvious to all.

Bolivian Christian miner

Last month I mentioned a man in Côte d’Ivoire who back in 1959 had been wanting some Christian literature in his own language. I met him in 2004 - then well into his 70’s.  Edward had waited 40 years to get his hands on his own New Testament in his own language. When he received it he was ecstatic and literally danced for joy. It is now his most treasured possession.

At her Coronation in 1953, Queen Elizabeth was presented with a Bible with these words “We present you with this Book, the most valuable thing this world affords. Here is wisdom; this is the Royal Law; these are the lively oracles of God.”

As I write these notes, the world is holding its breath awaiting the outcome of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Some cynics have already dubbed it as ‘the global suicide pact’. Sadly there appears  little hope of all the conflicting vested financial interests agreeing to grasp the nettle and take the action necessary to avert a global catastrophe.  Also, many people in Cumbria are reeling from the loss of all their ‘possessions’ - some having even lost their lives in the awful floods. The stark reality is that hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of people around the world live constantly with the threat or even the reality of such disasters every day. This should concentrate our own minds as to what is truly important to us.

Sadly, too many people are prepared to settle for “bread and circuses” while the really important issues of life are blissfully ignored - like rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic.

All this speaks to me of some of the things Jesus had to say on the subject of “possessions” and treasure.

“A persons’ life does not consist in the abundance of their possessions.”

“What does it profit anyone to gain the whole world yet lose their soul in the process?”

“A person does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” - note that there isn’t any mention of “circuses” to go with the “bread” in anything that Jesus spoke about. Circuses have a habit of packing up and moving on very quickly leaving a very flat feeling - if that is what has been the source of your ‘joy’.

  He did say that in contrast to so many things that we seem to prize,  the Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure found in a field - so valuable that the finder sells everything he has in order to buy the field and gain title to the treasure!.

              I wonder what you regard as so valuable that you would give anything in order to get it?

‘Wayfarer’ with Edward & his wife in Côte d’Ivoire

 I will not offer you empty ‘good wishes for a happy and prosperous’ New Year, but I will offer prayers that at least some of our readers will this new year discover the real and indestructible treasure of meeting Jesus and so finding the only lasting treasure.