Journey: Into The Never-ending Way

Chapter 7: The Way

Whenever he had a few lazy moments he'd take a walk on the beach below the cabin his parents had left him some years ago. They had worked and saved all their lives to buy the land and build the cabin that they would some day proudly pass on to their only son.

The sand felt warm and crunchy between his bare toes. The morning sun scattered warming sprinkles of light across his shoulders. The clouds were clearing away now, as they often did, as if by some unseen decision they decided to play hide-and-seek with the sun.

The night before he'd heard the waves crashing on shore, angry energy that'd been more intense than normal. Perhaps a storm out at sea had riled up the water, pushing it with a vengeance onto an unsuspecting beach. It had reached up the bank and carried dirt and rock away, a prize for a grumpy storm.

It was curious how the sandy beach had stood its ground. It now bore the scares of retreating rocks and dirt without giving up more than a little of its sand.

A glint of sunlight splashed up ahead, just above the sand line. The man sauntered up to the source. Brushing away a tangle of seaweed ancient-looking narrow slabs of wood seemed to stare back at him. He cleared away the remaining dirt that blocked his view of a lid. It was an old chest. I wonder what secrets this old boy is hiding, he thought as he pried it open with a stick that'd been hiding nearby.

The tarnished golden coins lit up his brain like a Christmas tree with its lights fully engaged."Oh, wow!" He said out loud. He started to lift the chest for a trip back to the cabin. It wouldn't budge. It was far to heavy and still mired deep into the ground. This job would take some excavation.

Excavation would draw attention to the source of his work. It's a public beach after all. The contents would legally belong to the county.

A nifty idea encouraged him to take a trip to the county office. "Can I buy a little strip of land next to my cabin?" County government was always looking for extra money to pay for beach maintenance. "Public beach access wouldn't be affected."

"There's just this little knob of land behind it that I need to build some steps from my cabin down the hill."

"I'll run it by the council and we'll get back to you."

The response didn't seem very favorable. So, he spent the next several days planning for a midnight raid on the chest.

A call announced itself with a recognizable ring on his cell phone. "You can buy fifty feet for one million dollars."

They probably thought that would end the conversation. He'd calculated the value of the coins in the chest, left buried long ago by some enterprising pirate.

He took the next few days off of work and busied himself selling everything he had, including the cabin.

The clerk at the county office nearly fell off her chair when he laid the cashier's  check on the counter. At first she just stared at it with a puzzled look.

"Ok." She said as if her brain had suddenly become a slow motion movie clip.

It took the better part of a month but the deal went through. He hauled a backhoe out to that thin strip of land and dug up the chest.

He was right the chest stirred up a lot of interest in the local community including a front page article in the local paper.

LOCAL MAN FINDS PIRATE COINS WORTH MILLIONS!

But it was all his because it was found on land that he owned.

The Kingdom of heaven is like treasure 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 the field. (Matthew 13:44, NIV)