Lumps of Clay

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened lumps of clay. It was like someone had rolled balls of clay and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man so he took the bag out of the cave with him.

As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the lumps of clay one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could. He thought little about it until he dropped one of the lumps and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone.

Excited the man started breaking open the remaining lumps of clay. Each contained a similar treasure.

He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay lumps he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay lumps with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he just threw it away.

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling so we discount it. We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person by God.

There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.

May we see the people in our world as God sees them.