Tip of My Iceberg

We’ve discovered a phenomenon in central Florida that I’m sure is a reality in many other areas of the country. Maybe the world.

It’s called dumpster diving. People throw away valuable items that could be reused or repurposed for greater enjoyment. Many may ask, “Why not sell things at a garage sale?” To which I would reply, “That’s too much work for just these few things.” So people place things at the end of their driveways the day before the trash is picked up, because the county has agreed to pick up these large items and dispose of them.

In apartment complexes, people often leave things sitting by the dumpster that they don’t want to take with them.

Somebody’s junk is someone else’s treasure.

So when Debbie and Taylor found this Minnie Mouse tiny cottage for their girls, it was a win-win. It needed only some cleaning, and the girls saw it as their new playhouse. No money spent, and great benefits resulted.

For the girls, this was an unexpected treasure, a new place to play, a special place to hide their own valuables. For Mom and Dad, it was a valuable gift that didn’t cost them a dime.

I don’t always know what has value. If it doesn’t look significant to me, I question the worth of the object and whether I should keep it.

When our parents both passed, we all got a few things of theirs that were somewhat important. I received a wooden box with an incomplete set of very tarnished silverware. Not being the china/silver kind of gal, I didn’t think it was worth much. It wasn’t even the full set. I thought about giving it to Goodwill until my sister informed me that what was in the box was sterling silver, not silver-plated. The pieces individually had value, even if the set wasn’t all there. Further, I found out it had been my grandmother’s; pieces had been lost over the years. The value had been hidden from me; I didn’t understand what it was or who it had belonged to.

We’ve all been in a place where we misjudged what we didn’t understand.

Jesus understood that, especially when it had to do with something like heaven. Heaven is the place most people ultimately want to think of as their destination, but many don’t believe in its existence. Until the end is staring them in the face.

Jesus taught many of His sermons in the form of parables, a type of story with a moral or emotional significance. They paint pictures that would have been familiar to the people at that time. One of these parables was a picture Jesus painted of heaven.

“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.” Matthew 13:44.

Every village had its story of men who’d become rich by finding hidden treasure that had been concealed in times of war or oppression, especially during the Roman occupation. It was common for people to hide riches in places they wouldn’t be found. When people died, others would discover unexpected treasure so profound that it satisfied unmet needs. This man had plodded across this field many times without knowing the treasure just below his feet. He finds what he didn’t know he was looking for, and then he sells everything to buy the field, so the treasure is his.

For us, this is something that can meet our deepest poverty–the treasure of forgiveness in Jesus, where we find the guarantee of heaven. The people listening to this parable fully understood the picture behind this story.

It comes down to choice. What are we willing to give to be guaranteed heaven? We don’t have to work for it; we do have to receive it as a gift.

Just like Kolly and Thea, the unexpected treasure of a playhouse was a gift.

Heaven is so much better than a playhouse.