{"id":4608,"date":"2025-05-07T08:04:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T12:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2025-05-07T08:04:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T12:04:01","slug":"true-treasure-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/07\/true-treasure-2\/","title":{"rendered":"True Treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Beirut, Lebanon, was once considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world.\u00a0 It was known as the Paris of the Middle East.

All that changed during the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s.\u00a0Beirut was devastated.\u00a0Citizens fled the city as fast as they could.

Sami was a Lebanese Christian who, with his family, chose to stay behind.

One day when Sami and his wife were driving along a major highway, they spotted a suitcase lying on the shoulder.\u00a0Sami got out to investigate.\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t go near it!\u201d his wife pleaded, traumatized by the number of roadside bombs that had been planted in the area.

Sami carefully ran his hands all around the suitcase.\u00a0Then he lifted it.\u00a0\u201cI think there\u2019s something in it!\u201d he said.

If that was intended to reassure his wife, it didn\u2019t work.\u00a0To her utter horror, Sami put the suitcase into their car and drove it home.\u00a0

After failing to find any identifying marks, he finally decided to open it.

It was filled to the rim with money.

There was a business card inside.\u00a0Sami dialed the number.\u00a0A male voice answered.\u00a0Sami said, \u201cSir, have you lost something?\u201d There was a long pause before the man responded.\u00a0\u201cHave you found it?\u201d\u00a0

Sami described the suitcase and its contents.\u00a0The man was overjoyed.\u00a0His family had liquidated all their assets.\u00a0They had been rushing to the airport when, in the chaos, the suitcase had somehow become lost.

Now the man insisted that Sami come to his house so his family could meet, as he put it, the last honest man in Beirut.\u00a0

Sami made the trip and returned the money.\u00a0The head of the household was almost speechless.\u00a0\u201cThis is our treasure,\u201d he said.\u00a0This was his family\u2019s ultimate security.

\u201cIf I may,\u201d said Sami, \u201clet me show you my treasure.\u00a0In fact, I want you to have this.\u201d

He placed into their hands a copy of the Bible \u2013 the very first Bible they had ever owned \u2013 setting them on a path to discover a whole new kind of security.

Your security is whatever you think, you hope, and you assume will take care of you, no matter what.

Jesus offers his own take on this subject in one of the shortest of his short stories, which are known as parables: \u201cThe kingdom of heaven is like\u00a0treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field\u201d (Matthew 13:44).

There wasn\u2019t anything resembling a trustworthy banking system until more than a thousand years after the time of the New Testament.\u00a0

If you needed to secure your nest egg, what could you do?

You could hide it in the ground. The owner of the treasure, unfortunately, might die before revealing its location.\u00a0And if someone stumbled upon it, the money reverted not to its finder, but to the new owner of the land.\u00a0

That\u2019s why, in Jesus\u2019 story, the digger who makes the discovery of a lifetime knows exactly what he has to do.\u00a0He has to buy that property<\/em>.\u00a0This would not have been as easy as contacting a local real estate agent and putting an offer on the table.\u00a0Ancestral lands were passed from generation to generation.\u00a0Families would be exceedingly reluctant to part with the very soil where parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had eked out their existence.\u00a0 \u00a0

So the one who has discovered the hidden riches will have to count the cost

Is he willing to surrender an astronomical sum \u2013 perhaps his entire net worth \u2013 in order to obtain the greatest treasure he\u2019s ever seen?

That’s what Jesus is asking us<\/em>: \u201cWhat\u2019s it worth to you to have a relationship with me?\u00a0 What will you put on the table?\u00a0 Will you turn your back on that habit you simply cannot give up?\u00a0 Or the prestige you\u2019ve worked your whole life to achieve?\u00a0 Or your need to be in control of the next 24 hours?\u00a0 Or the dreams you have for your children, the ones you\u2019re hoping will validate your identity as a good parent?\u201d\u00a0

It\u2019s a question that ought to take our breath away.\u00a0

We have some options, of course.\u00a0

We can pretend that Jesus wasn\u2019t really being serious.\u00a0Or we can gamble that the asking price, between now and the day we die, will somehow go down. Or we can buy a Powerball ticket, or a bucket of tickets, and hope for the best.

Then again, we can believe that Jesus was being entirely serious.\u00a0

And we can accept his invitation:

We give up a life we cannot keep in order to gain a life we can never lose.<\/em>

That\u2019s the one sure way that life\u2019s greatest treasure becomes ours.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Beirut, Lebanon, was once considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world.\u00a0 It was known as the Paris of the Middle East. All that changed during the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s.\u00a0Beirut was devastated.\u00a0Citizens fled the city as fast as they could. Sami was a Lebanese Christian who,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[177,132],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-parables","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4610,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions\/4610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}