When I was a pastor on Whidbey Island, and our children were very young, we had just finished reading “Blackbeard’s Ghost” to our ‘little pirates,’ so it seemed reasonable, living on an island after all, for them to set off in search of buried treasure.
So down the beach they went, child’s yellow shovel in one hand and blue bucket in the other, to search for the ‘x’ etched in the soil (and drawn on the burned-edged map dad provided) left eons ago (that afternoon) by this nefarious ne’re-do-well (referring to the pirate, not the pastor/dad).
They found it too, these little pirates did, both the ‘x’ and the treasure buried beneath it, on the very edge of a cliff (relatively ‘small embankment’ to appease their nervous mother) at the base of the gnarly old dead oak that frowned over the scene, only accessible (ladder dad provided) by the courageous treasure-seekers (our children).
That story now these many years later our grown pirates are fond of telling their own children as they also set out on their treasure-hunting adventures.
Speaking of finding that which is beyond compare, I have on my Facebook page this declaration: “Married 50 years to my dearest treasure on all this earth, now in heaven.”
Max Lucado wrote, “A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him to find her.”
And so it was for us.
