jewellers

We're on 'patience' still along at the school. The value for this month.

The Head began with a riddle.

What moves at around 2 and a half miles an hour, and takes about two weeks to travel from Lands End to John O'Groats?

He got a variety of interesting answers. Including "a train" (which doesn't say much for the children's take on the speed of this mode of transport), "a letter" (which doesn't reflect too well on their view of the GPO), and "a bike" (which suggested they'd maybe been watching a bit of Sport Relief).

The answer, of course, is Spring. Good things come to those who wait. And if you live, like us, in Scotland, you just have to wait that extra couple of weeks.

He had some interesting stories to make his point.

* * *

A young lad went off to work as an apprentice in a jeweller's shop. The first day there, all he got to do was simply hold a precious stone in his hand.

"Hold that," the older jeweller said. All day he simply held the stone.

Day two was the same. That's all he got to do. Hold the stone. All day.

By the end of day three, when the same thing had happened again, the young lad was getting fed up.

By the end of day six he was really in mutinous mood. "When on earth am I going to be getting to learn to be a jeweller?" he cried, his frustration boiling over.

"Oh, you will," the old man said, then left him as before to hold the stone.

When the jeweller put the stone in his hands at the start of the seventh day and once again said "Hold it, please," the young lad was about to refuse.

Instead, he found himself saying instinctively - "That's not the same stone!"

"You're learning," the old man said.

* * *

The children looked blank for a moment. I'm not sure that all of them got his point straight away.

But it's a point well made. And it has its application, too, in other realms.

We have in our hands the treasure of God's truth. The business of 'holding the stone in our hands', becoming entirely familiar with that truth, is a slow and tedious business.

Day after day, week after week, reading and pondering Scripture. It's hardly exactly exciting. We often find the challenge of such dedicated study an onerous, tedious work. We sympathise with how the young lad felt.

But it's only really as we undertake that work and become (without our often realising it) familiar with the treasure of God's truth - it's only then we recognise instinctively a substituted look-alike.

In the 'instant', 'quick-fix' world in which we live today, this challenge of apprenticeship in Christ goes right against the grain.

You want to be a jeweller, who handles God's own truth and passes on such treasure to a needy world? Then you're going to have to start just like the young lad in the story at the school.

'Holding the stone': reading the Scriptures, feeling the force of their truth, reflecting on all that God says. Again and again. Day after day.

Yes, it's sometimes tedious. Yes, it sometimes seems a pointless exercise. Yes, you'd want to be immersed in something more exciting.

But you're handling treasure. You need to know your stones. You need to have that instinct which enables you to recognise the fake.

Because there are a lot of imitation 'stones' being peddled in the marketplace of faith today.

Develop a pattern of regular reading of Scripture. Learn to do this jeweller thing. Because there simply are not short-cuts here at all.

Hold God's truth in your hand. Day after day. Even when it's tedious. Which it will be often enough. Even when it starts to seem quite pointless. Which it sometimes will.

Learn to be a 'jeweller'. The world of today needs people in whom they can trust, people who know where the treasure of God can be found, and people who see quite instinctively whenever what's false is being touted.

Learn to be a jeweller like that. It's more than worth the effort and it's more than worth the wait.