Panning for Gold

I believe a stumbling block occurs in our lives’ journey when we fail to maintain the positives and fail to learn from the negatives during any given event. Sometimes we focus on a single event in life so much so that we can't seem to move on without referring back or repeating the same mistakes.

I remember as a kid visiting Columbia California with family friends and another time on a school trip to which we would participate in panning for gold. Looking back I find that panning for gold is a good metaphor for life’s events. During the Gold Rush men would dredge for gold and use a conveyer belt mechanism to dispense water and screen the rocks, dirt, and gold with pans. Equipment has evolved over time but the same principles apply - eliminate the sand, dirt, and rocks and value the gold.

As a child visiting Columbia's Gold Panning you are given a bag of dirt - not very exciting and perhaps slightly disappointing. It's not until the child leans over the running water and starts getting their hands wet do they see the shin that might be inside their ‘bag of dirt’. A patient process of shaking the sand out, throwing away the rocks, gently sifting through the particles results in finding gold. I don’t believe it would be untrue to say sometimes we are immovable on our unattractive ‘bag of dirt’ that we don’t let the gold shine. We are so disappointing when we realized our neighbor had more gold in his bag. We refuse to get our hands too wet. We are not patient enough to search. We have expectations of faulty bags. We settle for anything shiny even if it’s not gold.

I believe this broken world will give us dirty unattractive ‘bags of dirt’ and it is our choice to filter through them. Through our strength and will in God we learn how to 'pan for gold'. It is not until you eliminate the dirt/negativity that you may see your gold. It is our choice to maturing the positives or carry around bags of dirt without knowing what gift is inside.