MAZ '15 Post 5: My Treasure Chest

From my notes of Tuesday, March 17, Day 4:

          The huntsman keeps me company through the night; Orion’s constellation is often the first thing that I see from my cot when I am awakened throughout the night here at the Gila River Indian Community. It always makes me smile as Orion is the first constellation that Cindy shared with me when we were dating.

From my notes of Thursday, March 19, Day 6:

          I missed a couple of days of note taking, or was it just one? That’s what can happen out here, getting caught up in a hectic pace, moving the team from there to here and back again. Maybe though it was more of a focus on the lesson that I delivered Tuesday night along with the rain coming in as a beautiful distracter.

          I felt Kim’s urging for me to share my little testimony but really had no idea of how to relate it to The Treasure in the Field or The Pearl of Great Price. It wasn’t until I had started my talk and was partly through the scriptures that I was able to find the parallel. If it reached anyone, it was God’s grace and His Holy Spirit at work.

          We reviewed the scriptures of the two parables and the group shared their experiences of giving up some stuff in order to get the good stuff. Then I gave my literal interpretation of The Pearl from Matthew 13: 45 & 46.

          Read verse 45 and stop: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.”

         

          It says that the Kingdom is the merchant who is searching. 

         Then in verse 46 he sells everything he has and buys it. “When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

          Jesus is the merchant and when he finds us, he gives his very life in order to have us in His Kingdom. Jesus’ treasure chest has been filled with his people at the cost of everything he had, his blood, his life…

          Then I related my story of finding my heart again and obeying God’s voice to come on my first MAZ thinking that I’d found a pretty cool rock, a little caked in mud and covered in dust but fun to have nonetheless. Later during our time in Arizona that year we were asked to share our testimony with the students and I shared the pain and bitterness that I had been carrying against God for years and how the bitterness had driven a wedge between me and God.

MAZ '15 Team @ Stotonic
in front of the new vatu
Photo courtesy of Paul Hofmann
a gem of a guy himself

          As I finished my story that evening on my first MAZ the group of twelve and thirteen year-olds along with the adult advisers gathered around me a prayed over me. I was healed of the bitterness and that was when I found that the rock was really a Jewel, my Pearl of Great Price. Those kids and those adults then, every team in between, and the kids and adults on this year’s team occupy my treasure chest. It doesn’t feel like sacrifice to have them in my life.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

         

In His Grip,

jerry