There’s a show on Discovery channel called Gold Rush which is about three groups who are in Alaska mining for gold. The show documents all the trials and tribulations they go through in order to discover the buried gold buy digging and moving layers and layers of dirt all the way down to the bedrock. Through all the thousands of tons of dirt and rock they move, they are in search of small flakes of gold. Day after day dirt and rocks are sent through a wash plant machine that cleans, shakes and filters all the sediment just to find these tiny flakes of gold.
This got me thinking about how God is much like buried gold. God is in all of us and sometimes he’s buried like the gold in Alaska and we have to dig deep to find Him. Just as the miners get to that bedrock, we too have to get to the solid base of who we truly are – children of God. It’s our job to break through all that dirt in our lives to let God shine from within us. It can be tough when we see all the muck of society and the world around us, but remember when the gold miners are hard at work they aren’t looking for the dirt, they’re looking for the gold! The same goes for us, we can either focus on all of our ‘dirt’, or we can look for the good in life and the God in us.
This same ‘God mining’ mentality applies to others in our lives. We can focus on their rough exterior of others or spend some effort mining for the good in them. In the news we are always hearing about ‘digging up the dirt on someone’, but what about digging up some gold on someone? As parents, this is a great opportunity for us to do a little mining with our kids. By looking for and acknowledging the good in them versus looking at their ‘dirt’, we will find more peace and be more patient with them. This will also help the kids to do some mining of their own and be mindful that God is in them and they can work on letting those flakes of God shine through them. By working on this together, you will naturally create a tighter bond between you and your kids which will lead to higher self confidence in them and thus a solid foundation for happy, well-adjusted kids.
Imagine the peace in your life and in your family as you discover gold God in you and them.