{"id":5570,"date":"2026-07-10T07:17:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5570"},"modified":"2026-07-10T07:17:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:17:24","slug":"streets-of-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/10\/streets-of-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Streets of Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

Martin Frobisher couldn’t believe his luck.\u00a0\u00a0

He was already celebrated as one of England’s most daring and accomplished sailors.

He had helped vanquish the Spanish Armada that had tried to invade England in 1588.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

In the service of Queen Elizabeth I, he had searched for the Northwest Passage, that mystical pathway rumored to exist somewhere north of Canada that would allow ships to travel unimpeded from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

Along the way, as he trudged through\u00a0stretches of wilderness in\u00a0present-day\u00a0Newfoundland, he stumbled upon reams of shiny yellow ore.\u00a0\u00a0

By returning with a boatload of gold nuggets, he would become a national hero.\u00a0A treasure of this magnitude would guarantee that\u00a0England could keep pace with her\u00a0Spanish rivals.

And he himself would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.

But a funny thing happened when Frobisher\u00a0presented his fortune\u00a0to the royal assayers in London.\u00a0Not an ounce of gold could be found.\u00a0He\u00a0had jubilantly transported thousands of pounds of iron pyrite.\u00a0Fool’s gold<\/em>. That’s what you see in the picture above.\u00a0

Frobisher, humiliated but determined, immediately secured a commission to return to the New World.\u00a0This time he loaded three ships with yellow ore from another geological seam.\u00a0He and his men risked their lives sailing back across the Atlantic with their overloaded vessels.

Sadly, the result was exactly the same.\u00a0

Over the course of two years Martin Frobisher had managed to transport more than\u00a01,700 tons<\/em> of worthless iron pyrite to his homeland.\u00a0His reputation never recovered.\u00a0\u00a0

Iron pyrite is called fool’s gold because it turns people who want to get rich into fools.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

So, what happened to those 1,700 tons?\u00a0Much of the pyrite ended up\u00a0as part\u00a0of modern-day British roads.\u00a0

There’s an incredible irony in that.\u00a0What will heaven be like?\u00a0According to the book of Revelation, the streets of the new Jerusalem will be paved with gold: \u201cThe great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass\u201d (21:21). Is this a way of describing the next world’s matchless beauty?\u00a0

Actually, the Bible’s authors were\u00a0sending a rather different message.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

In the ancient world, the most disagreeable\u00a0part of the human body was the bottom of the foot.\u00a0A victorious king would be said to\u00a0put his enemies under his feet.\u00a0As Nancy Sinatra memorably sang, “These boots are made for walkin’, and that’s just what they’ll do, and one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.”\u00a0

To be walked over, in other words, is the ultimate disrespect.\u00a0

In this world, people will do almost anything to obtain financial security.\u00a0They will work ridiculous\u00a0hours, lie to their clients and business partners,\u00a0ignore their children, betray\u00a0their spouses, and\u00a0literally work themselves to death.\u00a0All for the sake of gold.\u00a0\u00a0

In heaven, gold will be of such little consequence that we will\u00a0walk on it.\u00a0

Streets are meant to take us somewhere, and gold really does take us places in this world. We will always need resources.\u00a0\u00a0

But the kind of treasure we can hold in our hands is not life’s true\u00a0treasure.\u00a0The world’s richest people are those who love God and love others.\u00a0

Wisdom may be defined as living right now, in this world, according to the way things are going to be in the next world.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

May God grant\u00a0us the wisdom today<\/em> to give our hearts to the right stuff.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Martin Frobisher couldn’t believe his luck.\u00a0\u00a0 He was already celebrated as one of England’s most daring and accomplished sailors. He had helped vanquish the Spanish Armada that had tried to invade England in 1588.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the service of Queen Elizabeth I, he had searched for the Northwest Passage, that mystical pathway… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1144,36,645],"class_list":["post-5570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gold","tag-heaven","tag-treasure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5570","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=5570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5572,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5570\/revisions\/5572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}