Gold: Its attractions and distractions!

Gold:  Its attractions and distractions!

I used this element to make a distinction between good and evil, that can either present to us unending treasure or everlasting pain.  There are 189 verses regarding gold in the bible, and the approaches to many can leave us wondering about their necessity or rejection in life.  

“With myrrh, aloes, and cassia your robes are fragrant.  From ivory-paneled palaces stringed instruments bring you joy.  Daughters of kings are your lovely wives;  a princess arrayed in Ophir’s gold comes to stand at your right hand.”  From a song for a royal wedding. (Ps 45: 9-10).

“If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored:  if you put iniquity far from your tent, and treat raw gold of Ophir as pebbles from the brook, then the Almighty himself shall be your gold and your sparkling silver.”  (Jb 22: 23 - 25). (Ophir; a region of great wealth in the bible).

“So Moses went back to the Lord and said, Ah this people has indeed committed a grave sin in making a god of gold for themselves!”  (Ex 32: 31).  Without Moses the people grew tired of being without God’s presence.  

“They prostrated themselves and did him homage.  Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”  (Mt. 2: 11).  

From using gold as an everlasting symbol at a Royal Son’s wedding, to the abuse of earthly treasure in place of God at Mt. Saini, to a gift from the Gentiles to the Son of God, Jesus, at his birth.  We find that without God in the essence of his person our lives can be filled with multiple earthly attractions promising us untold treasures that will lead us to eternal destruction of our souls.  However, when our consumption of the grace from God the real treasure, in any form, becomes the only attraction of everlasting life with God.  

God, who is gold himself, must fit the gift the visitor from the East handed to Jesus at his Incarnation/Birth.  Nowhere, from the creation of man to his ultimate resurrection, will anything on earth fit the reality of treasure except God.  We use gold to describe in human terms, if that were even possible, what God is about.  He is beyond even the element of gold as an adjective to describe his brilliance to the adherence of our worshiping his Trinitarian  existence.

There is no distraction in the Love and Life God handed us from the cross where his only Son Jesus Christ gave his precious Body and Blood so that we could live in a gold covered city illuminated by the glory of our God.  Our attraction will become the brilliance that comes through his holiness; an existence we shall also share in eternity. 

Ralph B. Hathaway