An Australian farmer, digging post-holes on his farm, unearthed a single chunk of gold worth 77,000 dollars. He promptly named it his "Mortgage Stone," sold it, and paid off his mortgage.
A nugget of gold that size is rare and valuable, but covered with mud it looked like any other ordinary stone in the same dirty condition. The farmer could have pushed it aside and continued with his digging in the dirt, but the nugget caught his attention. He looked, and he tested, and he proved its value.
The gospel of God's grace is like that piece of gold in some ways. The farmer was busy with the common duties of his life when he discovered it, and we too may be busy in the ordinary course of our lives when the gospel is presented to us and we discover the Christ of Calvary.
Finding the gold made the farmer far richer. Now let a person genuinely believe the happy news: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," and he will have received true riches—riches that will last forever—because the moment he believed he passed from "death" to "life."
It would have been a large loss indeed, if the farmer had failed to recognize the gold as he pulled it out of the hole, but it is a tragedy when someone fails to recognize the truth of the gospel and never submits to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The farmer might have lost his farm to the loan company, but the person who fails to find the Savior loses far more; he loses his soul. "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:3636For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36).
The person who finds Jesus Christ the Savior makes the happiest, most valuable find possible in his or her lifetime.