On one of our weekly hunting trips, while I was stationed in Alaska, we stopped at a tourist place to “pan for gold.” Unlike the real prospectors who braved the wild and isolation to make it rich, we were goofing off. I recall not even expecting to find any gold. But I did! The process was tedious, tiring, and frustrating, but I uncovered a tiny flake of gold.
Amazed and proud, I carefully dabbed it out of the pan and dropped the flake into one of the picture sleeves in my wallet. Fifty-plus years later, the wallet is gone, and with it, my sliver of gold. Only the memory remains, and that is worth more than the flake.
Fast forward with me to my library building years. Back then, religious data would have been pretty much inaccessible if it didn’t have a binding to hold the pages of information together and upright. When the internet arrived, my pastoral library had hundreds of books, making bound books cumbersome for use and storing. When I retired, the books were all boxed and now sit useless in the space above my woodworking shop.
A small softback copy Apples in Silver Bowls: The Rediscovery of Redeeming Love is locked in one of those boxes. Originally written in German, it was translated by Elizabeth Bender and Leonard Gross. The book’s premise was taken from Proverbs 25:11, “A word spoken at the right time is like gold apples in silver settings.”
Whichever one of those moments comes first in my recall, the other usually tags along.
This morning, while chasing a thought through the Google maze, I hit upon a word picture of “panning for gold” to describe Bible study. Thus, my partnering memories arrived.
In my mental meandering on the idea, the notion returned to me that the fuss many of us “conservative” Christians make on insisting on the “infallibility” of the Bible could be a distraction. I fear this insistent pronouncement has left us with a focus on what the Bible “IS” rather than on what it was intended “TO DO.”
The Bible is not an instruction manual for life. It is a living and active expression of Life, Divine Life. Life is solely sourced and distributed by the Creator. It is a story of His creation and benevolent love for His wayward and belligerent “image.”
The study of the Bible should be like panning for gold. The Bible could be seen as the pan. The student fills the pan with a scoop of dirt, ideas we form from living outside the garden. Then, adding, agitating, and refilling the pan with water, the Holy Spirit, the least valued dirt, is sloshed over the edge back to the other lifeless dirt. Following a lot of sloshing and swirling of the pan and water, the common is eliminated, and a flake of truth shines brilliantly in the bottom of the pan, gleaming through the water.
Indeed, hapless discoveries of gold nuggets are sometimes discovered while walking through life. But not very often.
We like to hear how someone else found gold. It’s even better when we are allowed to touch the gold found. Stories of golden acquisitions may be inspiring, but they cannot “Inspire.” Their gold cannot become our gold. While such touching and viewing might be inspiring, that thrilling moment soon passes, and we are back to living in the everyday dirt. Nonetheless, we long for easily found gold to purchase whatever we anticipate would move us from feeling vulnerable to feeling valuable.
No one can pan your gold for you! Divine wisdom is always connected to the Word of God. Don’t cry to God for wisdom while spending minimal time with Him through His Word. Where you claim to be wise, test that confidence in the Word. What you are using for guidance may be fool’s gold.
If you want to have wisdom to thrive in the bewildering complexity of your life tasks, you must diligently immerse yourself in the Bible. The “gold” is not found in knowing the words but in coming to understand the Word, the person of God.
“I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich,” (Revelation 3:18, English Standard Version)
Photo – Care for a romantic pedicab ride through Central Park in New York City?
Baldwin Heirlooms 