Treasure hunting

My son, if you receive my words, And treasure my commands within you, So that you incline your ear to wisdom, And apply your heart to understanding; Yes, if you cry out for discernment, And lift up your voice for understanding, If you seek her as silver, And search for her as for hidden treasures;  - Proverbs 2:1-4

My only real hobby is something called geocaching. It is worldwide ‘treasure hunt’ which is played in virtually every country on earth and even in orbit on the ISS. These’ treasures,’ or caches are hidden by players and posted on the website www.geocaching.com. Other players go online, find the coordinates, and then use phones or GPS receivers to find them. They can be a tiny container only big enough to contain a logbook to the size of a building. When a player finds one they sign the logbook, perhaps change our tokens or other items, then log the find online. I am only a casual player with less than 600 finds in eight countries and seven states. Many folks have tens of thousands of find. Just this geocaching celebrated 3,000,000 caches around the world. It is great fun, and a lot of the fun is in the hunt.

When you find the coordinates the fun has just started. Now you have to search for the cache. Sometimes they are easy to find, but sometimes you really have to look. You dig through leaves and brush. You crawl into caves and hedges. You get down on your hands and knees or reach up as far as you can to find the cache. You cross rivers and climb mountains and some abseil into deep pits. To those dedicated geocachers nothing gets in the way.

And then the find! Even in this little game there is great joy in discovering the cache. The cache icon on game map is replaced with a smiley face.

What does all that have to do with this psalm?

Search for wisdom as a hidden treasure. Go after it. Swim rivers and climb mountains and reach into dark recesses and take a risk and don’t give up and don’t let anything get in your way. Later we are going to read that wisdom is the principle thing – so get wisdom at all costs. Search for it as you would silver – or a geocache.