The treasure within

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.

They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone! Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach for a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessels. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It is not always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it. We see that person as less important than someone beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in every one of us. If we take time to get to know that person, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendship because the gems were hidden in bits of clay. May we see people in our world our Maker sees them.

I am so blessed by the gems of friendship I have with each of you reading this. Thank you for looking beyond my clay vessel.

What is more, is not just our inner beauty, but the fact that Christ lives in us, He is the treasure hidden in us, we no longer lives, He lives in us....what a privilege and Joy