When I was a boy I used to hunt for treasure. We had heard a report that there was a diamond embedded in a rock cliff way back in the woods. My friend and I decided that we would get that diamond so we hunted all day one Saturday for it.

We were told that diamonds in the rough looked a bit dark as if there was a rust or oil ring around them. To this day, I don’t know if that is true or not, but that is what we believed because someone had said it.

After hiking through the woods and climbing every rock bank we came across, we found what looked like a brown spot on the bottom side of a rock shelf. We could look up from under the shelf but we had no way to reach it. We could get on top of the rock shelf, but it was back far enough from the edge that we could not hang over the shelf to even see it.

We stood 20 feet below that shelf looking up at that dark spot convinced that we were looking at treasure that was out of our reach. We were devastated because we had no way to get up to that spot on the underside of that rock shelf. I know now that that spot was not a diamond. It was just a dark spot on a rock. We had looked all day and found something that someone had told us was a treasure. We did not research what a diamond in the rough looked like before we started hunting. We just took what we had heard and struck out on our expedition without the information or the equipment to mine diamonds.

As I reflect on this experience, I wonder what made us think there were diamonds in the rocky hills of southern Ohio. Was it because someone said it was there, or was it our desire to find a treasure? Is it possible to think something is true because it is what we want to hear? Could it be that we are searching for what we think is a diamond in the rough and missing out on a real treasure?

These and other life questions will be addressed Sunday morning as “The Gathering Place Family” meets at 240 Courthouse Parkway in Washington C.H. for Life Groups at 9:30 and in the lobby at 10 a.m. for our Pre-Service Connection where we enjoy coffee, juice and donuts. Our Worship Service and Children’s Church then begins at 10:30. Come at 7 p.m. and be part of our Wednesday night Bible Study and Children’s Ministry.