The Desert Sun, carried the story of a man who was walking his dog on a river-side path in Bedfordshire, England. He found an ancient gold penny. After examining it, coin expert Richard Bishop said, “It is quite simply the most important single coin find for a century. We fell off our chairs when we realized what it was.” The penny is 1,200-years-old and bears the image of Coenwulf, an Anglo-Saxon king whose reign was between 796 and 821AD. Prior to auction, the coin was expected to sell for approximately a quarter of a million dollars. Richard Bishop, the coin expert, said, “There is no way of putting a price on it because one hasn’t ever been found before. It is unique.” Unique it is, for on October 6, 2004, the coin brought $409,000 at auction, making it the most expensive British coin in history. The money will be divided between the landowner, Fen Reavers, and the man who found it. But it was no accident that this man found the coin. He is an amateur metal detector enthusiast. He has an eye for metal and coins on the ground. He is always looking and waving his metal detector over the ground, even while walking his dog. There must have been hundreds or thousands of people who walked right over that coin and never found it.
The point of the story is that you can’t have a pessimistic attitude toward life believing that nothing is ever going to work out. If you don’t purposely look for good things, you will never find them. It takes effort. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven was like a treasure hidden in a field
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