What boy or girl does not like to read about buried treasure, and especially if it has been found recently! This story is about a ship loaded with gold, silver and precious jewels which sank in a storm over 350 years ago off the coast of Florida. Many divers had tried to find that sunken ship, but it lay buried at the bottom of the ocean, hiding its valuable cargo.
Quite recently, a man named Mel Fisher began to search in earnest for the sunken ship. He and his team of divers spent weeks and months and years searching. Sometimes they were very discouraged, and sometimes they were encouraged by finding coins and jewelry from other sunken ships. But it was the main treasure ship, the Atocha, they were after.
A friend of this diving crew went to Spain and in a library found old parchments written in ancient Spanish. One parchment had information on this particular fleet of ships that sank. He copied the parchment and brought it back to the Fisher team. Now it was clear to them that they were looking in the wrong place. They were about 100 miles away from the spot marked on the parchment.
I like to think of this as an illustration of heaven being like a hidden treasure. We have all heard of the wonderful place called heaven, but we don’t know how we can get to it. Many are looking in the wrong place altogether. Some are following religious leaders who tell them to do the best they can. But there is a very old parchment that points the way, and people who can understand the language in which it was written have translated it for us so that we can read it for ourselves. That parchment is the Bible, and it tells us exactly how we can get to heaven! If you have a Bible and know the true way to heaven, will you be a friend to those looking in the wrong place and share the good news with them?
Once the divers had the new information, it did not take too long to find the Atocha. Soon the world heard of gold bars, silver, emeralds and other precious stones being brought up from the ocean floor. Later, these divers traveled to many cities so that we could see these rare treasures, and it was quite thrilling to hold in our hands a gold chain worth half a million dollars.
But gold and silver will eventually pass away, so it is much more important to make sure we are on our way to heaven. We have been separated from God by our sins, but because Jesus loves us, He came and paid the penalty for those sins by His death on the cross. He invites all, and that includes you, to come to Him for forgiveness and cleansing. When He washes us from our sins, we are like new and have become part of the family of God. Mel Fisher was determined not to give up his search, and God promises that “those that seek Me early shall find Me” (Proverbs 8:1717I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. (Proverbs 8:17)). He also promises, “Ye shall . . . find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:1313And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13)). We can find God by accepting the Lord Jesus as our Redeemer, and in trusting Him we have found the way to heaven.
ML-07/29/2001