Fool's gold

When have you ever been betrayed by the very thing you valued? John Sutter had fame and fortune in California with a large amount of land that he loved. He possessed thousands of head of cattle, horses and sheep until gold was discovered on his land. That began a gold rush which ended for him in bankruptcy. What he valued betrayed him.

Jesus said in Matt 6:21, “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” Fool’s gold (and real gold as well) has claimed many victims. The inhabitants of Judah fell under the spell of their wrong values and the Lord judged their sin. Steve Smartt’s story of Carl and Carla is a similar account, and it reminds me of the saying “we can choose our actions, but we can’t choose the consequences.” What the Israelites valued betrayed them.

Citizens in the Lord’s kingdom live by the values Jesus described in the sermon on the mount. Citizens of this world live by its values, such as fame, power and wealth. For example, Watergate has been in the news lately, but the values that spawned it are easily remembered by some of the book titles left in its wake: Blind Ambition, Lost Honor and Abuse of Power. But good also came from it--see great reads like Chuck Colson’s Born Again and Jeb Stuart Magruder’s An American life. Talk about changes in values! The turnaround in the lives of these two real-life men even outdid that of the fictional Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

All this leads me to pray for the Lord's help to live by His values and reject those of the world as fool’s gold. If you can locate a few samples of fool's gold to pass around the class, learners might be better challenged not to fall for wrong values in their lives.