Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
Harriet Tubman
As I sit here this morning, I wonder if we will ever get to a better place with race relations or with so many other artificial barriers we set up between ourselves. I’m wondering that because a few days ago I heard that someone used a derogatory word to describe someone and a group of people, a few days earlier. Even sadder was that it was used in describing a remarkable role model and woman named Harriet Tubman.
Harriet Tubman was born in 1820 into slavery, yet escaped and established a system of peoples and routes which became known as the Underground Railroad to rescue others from slavery. She spent and risked her life, through the Civil War and beyond, standing for the rights of others for freedom, and doing something to help them to achieve freedom. She had a dream which was born out of her own life and sorrow, and she followed it wherever God led her to live out that dream—in her case—to help others to freedom.
She found her purpose in life right where God had planted her—in slavery.
In his book, Acres of Diamonds, Russell Cromwell tells the story of a man named Ali Hafed, a farmer who had lived on his farm for years with his wife and children. He had health and peace and was content with his life. Until one day a priest visited and talked of “diamonds” sparkling like a million suns, the most beautiful things in all the world.
And Ali Hafed became discontented with what he had and sold his farm, left his wife and children with a friend and set out to find diamonds. For then, he thought, he would be rich, and then he would be happy, then he would be content with his life.
He searched the world over, looking for white sands and tall mountains, but found no diamonds. Until one day, broken, destitute, unable to see his family again, in a fit of utter despair and discontent with his life, he threw himself into the sea and died.
Meanwhile, the man who had bought Ali Hafed’s farm when he left, spotted an odd-looking chunk of black rock, took it home, put it on the mantle, and thought no more of it. Until one day that same priest came along, looked at it and saw a brilliant flash of light emitting from a crack in that rock. Something shiny, something beautiful lay beneath that rough exterior.
A diamond. And more and more diamonds were found there in an area that became the greatest diamond mine in all the world, and produced diamonds used in the Crown Jewels of England, Russia and Persia.
Right there on the very property that Ali Hafed had sold to begin his search for contentment and riches. Right beneath his very feet, the richest diamond mine in the world, and he didn’t even know it. He’d searched the world over to find contentment in life, to find meaning in life. Always looking somewhere else, and all he found was frustration, disappointment, heartache, despair, failure and ultimately death.
You and I are a lot like that at times. We spend years of our lives in all kinds of pursuits of success, pleasure, fame and wealth—in an effort to find happiness and contentment, when all the while it’s right beneath our very feet, in our own backyard, if only we’ll look, if only we’ll believe that we are each something beautiful created by God and can find our purpose in life right where we are in whom He created us to be.
You and I know people with incredible God-planted potential, who spend day after day, year after year, searching for greener pastures, or drowning in pools of self-pity for all that hasn’t gone their way.
• I married the wrong woman; I married the wrong man…
• I had a lousy childhood…
• Once again I didn’t get the job I wanted…
Blaming their dilemma on someone else or on unfair circumstances, they carry feelings of bitterness, hurt, anger and worry for years, and often just so they can have an excuse for their situation, while the dreams within their hearts that God planted there lay unfulfilled and passed by day after wasted day.
Perhaps it’s time for a paradigm shift in life. A different perspective of and for our lives. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to be someone we’re not, and realize that we are who we are—a wonderful creation of God. And no matter the circumstances of society into which we were born—into slavery, at the palace, or something or somewhere in between—God placed within us a purpose and dreams for this time in history to make a difference in our world.
And it begins right where we are sitting on our own diamond mine.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2013. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
