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Comfort in Ministry In 1966, the Palm Beach Post ran a story on people’s eating habits when they were stressed. In the story, the author coined the now familiar term “comfort food,” which he defined as “food associated with the security of childhood, like mother’s poached egg or famous chicken soup.” There is security that comes from the...

Final Greeting Hungarian painter Elmyr de Hory has become famous for painting high-quality forgeries. Over the course of his career, he forged works of Picasso, Matisse, Degas, and Modigliani. Around 1,000 of his forged paintings were sold to large art galleries all over the world. Once he was found out, his forgeries became appreciated as...

Treasures Are Valuable In 1962, George Toman bought a comic book for 12 cents. Nearly 50 years later, he took a bag of his old comic books to a Chicago-area shop to sell. To his surprise, that 12-cent investment turned out to be worth $12,000! It was an original first printing of the very first Spider-Man comic book. Over time, a simple object...

Treasures Can Be Unexpected In September 2010, a single security was turned over to the Missouri Treasurer’s office as unclaimed property. The staff identified it as highly valuable and searched for the rightful owner. When they found her—a Kansas City woman who wished to remain anonymous—she had no idea she’d inherited it and asked them...

Plundered Treasures The tables turned on Egypt when God freed the Israelites from bondage. When God sent Moses to confront Pharaoh, not even a world superpower could prevent Israel's liberation. From the burning bush, the Lord told Moses that Egypt would be so humbled that the former slaves would take as plunder the treasures of their former...

Do Not Trust in Material Treasures In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings novels, a silver metal called mithril is highly prized for its strength and beauty. The dwarfs mined and worked it, always desiring more. But as one character explained: "Even as mithril was the foundation of their wealth, so also it was their destruction." When we covet...

Do Not Pursue Material Treasures We often hear people talk about the American Dream. What they mean is that America is a land of opportunity and that anyone can succeed or better their life through hard work and determination. This dream may be achieved when we own a home, do well in our professional career, achieve a respectable job, or...

What Do You Treasure? The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery explains treasure as follows: "Given the natural human tendency to desire, pursue and hoard material wealth, treasure comes to symbolize what people consider truly valuable, worth possessing and pursuing. As a symbol then of value and significance, the kind of treasure a person seeks...

The Kingdom Is Like a Hidden Treasure Some Filipino fishermen found a huge, irregularly-shaped pearl inside a giant clam that stuck to their boat's anchor. With no idea of its value, they kept it for good luck and stashed it under a bed for ten years. When in 2016 they left it at their city' tourism office for safekeeping, they were stunned...

A Treasure in Jars of Clay In 2005 a Bach Archive researcher in Weimar, Germany, discovered a treasure. In a shoebox filled with birthday greetings for a duke, he found a previously unknown aria by Johann Sebastian Bach. The piece was written for the duke's birthday in 1713. The lyrics centered around the theme, "Everything with God and nothing...