Fo now, Hide my treasure

I have found a treasure: the treasure of God's love.

I know now where it is, but I am not yet ready to own it fully. So many attachments keep pulling me away. If I would fully own my treasure, I must hide it in the field where I found it, go off happily to sell everything I own, and then come back and buy the field.

I can be truly happy that I have found the treasure. But I should not be so naive as to think that I already own it.

Only when I have let go of everything else can the treasure be completely mine. Having found the treasure puts me on a new quest for it.

The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what I have already found. I can only seek God when I have already found God. The desire for God's unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched by that love.

Because finding the treasure is only the beginning of the search, I have to be careful. If I expose the treasure to others without fully owning it, I might harm myself and even lose the treasure. A newfound love needs to be nurtured in a quiet, intimate space. Overexposure kills it. That is why might hide the treasure and spend my energy in selling my property so that I can buy the field where I have hidden it.

This is ofen a painful enterprise, because my sense of who I am is so intimately connected to all the things I own: success, friends, prestige, money, degrees, and so on. But I know that nothing but the treasure itself can truly satisfy me. Finding the treasure without being ready yet to fully own it will make me restless. This is the restlessness of the search for God. It is the way to holiness. It is the road to the kingdom. It is the journey to the place where I can rest.