When Letting Go Stops Hurting
"“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it."
— Matthew 13:44-46
Jesus said these two short things indoors, to his own followers, after a day of speaking to crowds down by the lake. Ordinary country people had nowhere safe to keep savings and no bank that would take them, so they dug a hole, hid what they had and kept the spot to themselves. If the owner died, or was carried off in a war, what he hid stayed exactly where he left it, and a stranger could turn it up years later with a spade. The ground in the first picture was not the finder's, which is why he could not simply carry off what he had found: he had to own the soil before he could own what lay under it. Selling up, for a working family, meant the tools, the animals and the roof, with nothing waiting underneath to catch them. Pearls in that century were the top of the luxury market. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist writing then, put them first among all costly things, and they reached the Mediterranean by ship and caravan from the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, hundreds and in places thousands of miles away. The Greek word behind the second man is not a stallholder but a dealer who traveled for his stock. Once you see what is worth more, handing over the rest stops feeling like a loss.