DIG A LITTLE DEEPER

Soon after the old miner died, some of his relatives came to collect whatever he had of value. They arrived to find a simple miner’s shack with a primitive outhouse behind it deep in the mountains of Colorado. There was no electricity and no running water. Inside the shack was his mining equipment along other basics: a table and chair; single bed; pot-bellied stove; coffeepot;  cooking pot; a few clothes; a few books; a small supply of groceries; and a well-used kerosene lamp.

The family gathered up the miner’s simple possessions and loaded them into a truck. As they prepared to leave, one of the man’s old friends stopped by and asked if he might take something from the shack that would remind him of his friend. The family responded that they had retrieved everything but if there was anything left that he wanted to take, he was welcome to do so.

After the family left, the man slowly made his way to his deceased friend’s worn-out little cabin. He stood in the doorway for a time looking inside and remembering all the time he had spent there. He glanced around and then made his way over to a corner of the room. Bending down, he pried up several boards and then, from the space beneath the floor, he lifted out many small bags of gold that his friend had mined over the previous decades. The bags held a treasure worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For years the deceased miner had worked his claim and with patience and dogged persistence he pursued gold. Some days he returned to his shack with a smile on his face, a spring in his step, and an ounce or two of gold in the little sack in his pocket. But more often than not he returned to the shack with very few or no nuggets. Whenever he found gold, however, it went into one of his little sacks and was carefully hidden away. Only his best friend knew where the treasure was stored.

Mining was not easy work, certainly not like panning for gold in a stream. This was digging into the side of a mountain and searching for the gold that was locked away in solid rock from where it had to be extracted. 

Mining for gold like this is very much like digging for truth in Scripture. If the old Colorado mountain miner had settled only for what gold lay on the surface, he never would have left a fortune.

Matthew 7:7: “Keep on seeking, and you will find” (NLT). “Seek” means to strive, to earnestly search for something that is lost or hidden.

  

The miner’s family came, cleaned out what they found in his cabin and then left. In the same way, many Christians are satisfied with what they find in casual reading of Scripture, with what is on the surface. Yes, there is some really good truth lying there but there is more, much more if we take the time to dig, to meditate, to linger in the Word and in God’s presence.

“This Book of the Law (the Word of God) shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night” (Joshua 1:8, ESV). Why do you think God instructed Joshua the way He did?

We see Paul’s instruction to Timothy: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15, ESV).

And then there was Solomon’s instruction: “Whoever gives thought to the word (listens to instruction) will discover good (will prosper)” (Proverbs 16:20, ESV).

One day all Christians will stand before the Lord, not to be judged but to receive the rewards He will disperse to those who followed Him. Symbolically, the floorboards of our life will be lifted up and whatever nuggets we have stored there will be displayed. The apostle Paul referred to these as evidence of our life as Christ followers in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15:

“Anyone who builds on [the foundation of Jesus Christ] may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay or straw. But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames” (NLT).

What is beneath the floorboards of your life? Will it survive the fire of His scrutiny?