Today I want to share a little wisdom from a century past. It comes from a book I am reading. The book, Aunt Jane of Kentucky, first published in 1907, is a collection of feel good stories about people in rural Kentucky. The narrator, Aunt Jane, weaves delightful tales, full of fun and the occasional word of wisdom gleaned over a long lifetime. Today, I share one of her best tidbits.
"...part of that sermon stayed by me all my life. He preached about Nebuchadnezzar and the image he saw in his dream with the head of gold and the feet of clay. And he said that every human being was like that image; there was gold and there was clay in every one of us. Part of us was human and and part was divine. Part of us was earthly like the clay, and part heavenly like the gold. And he said that in some folks you couldn't see anything but the clay, but that the gold was there, and if you looked long enough you'd find it. And some folks, he said, looked like they was all gold, but somewhere or other there was the clay, too, and nobody was so good but what he had his secret sins and open faults...and that the thing for us to do was to look for the gold and not the clay in other folks. For the gold was the part that would never die, and the clay was jest the mortal part that we dropped when this mortal shall have put on immortality." -Eliza Calvert Hall in Aunt Jane of Kentucky
Most of us need to learn the art of finding the clay-hidden gold in difficult people in our lives. Sometimes, we also need to acknowledge that people who look like they are all gold still have clay in them too. Always, we need to remember that in the end, the clay will drop away but the gold will last.
Blessings on you today as you pan for gold,
Beth
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