“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field,
which a man found and covered up.
Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
-Matthew 13:44, ESV

Today was a typical Tuesday afternoon in that I had my 4-year-old son, Trevor, with me at the school while we waited for his 1st grade sister, Olivia, to finish her dance class. As I had a work call to make, I let him play at the playground while I watched him from the side, paying just enough attention to know he was there and safe.  When it was time to leave to go and grab Olivia, however, I noticed Trevor in the sandbox looking somewhat defeated.

As I told him it was time to go, he protested that he had a problem. When I asked him what was wrong, he explained that his batman car (which he had been playing with earlier indoors and had kept in his pocket or so I thought when we went to the playground) was in the sandbox.  Looking around and seeing nothing, I asked him what he meant, and he explained that he had buried it somewhere, like treasure… And now, he couldn’t find it even though he was trying so hard to dig holes all over to look for it.

Now this batman car wasn’t one of those overpriced vehicles from the toy store, but one of those cooler McDonald’s Kids Meal toys that Trevor enjoyed playing with.  That fact, plus just the “cuteness” (not sure if this is the right word?) of Trevor’s dilemma, helped me keep my cool, and even decide that maybe we could spend a few minutes after picking up his sister to see if this was a “treasure hunt” problem we could tackle together.

As we walked over to get his sister, I explained to him how usually when people “bury treasure,” they will mark the spot somehow, like with an “x” — his eyes widened as he exclaimed, “you mean like X marks the spot??” Yes, Trevor, like X marks the spot.  Otherwise, when it comes time to wanting to retrieve your buried treasure, you won’t have anyway of finding it…or at least no easy, sure way.

So, as we returned and I surveyed the sandbox, after a minute of randomly feeling around with my hands, I decided on a plan of action that, while I couldn’t help but worry that it couldn’t guarantee success, I couldn’t think of a better more time-efficient way to begin our search.

I took off my shoes and decided to comb through the sand one row at a time–can you see the ‘lines’ in the sand?:

So, not a perfect system, because really, what if I wasn’t hitting every spot, and what if Trevor dug deeper than he knew how to articulate… I wasn’t exactly an expert sandbox-comber-with-my-feet.  But really, I also had nothing to lose, and I knew Trevor well enough to be able to trust that if he said his car was in there, then most likely it was definitely in there, somewhere…

Several minutes into my search — after combing through the right half of the sandbox with no luck, Trevor excitedly exclaimed that he found a big rock! He explained to me that he had a great idea, he was going to throw the rock, and then dig where the rock hit the ground, because the rock would find his car.  Amused and deciding to be supportive of his developing reasoning skills, I encouraged him to go ahead and try his method, while I continued searching the second half of the sandbox with mine.

3/4 of the way through, feeling less and less hopeful of finding the car and wondering what would be my next step, or whether too much time would have passed and we would have to leave our quest unsuccessful to move on with our lives…my “foot” actually found it! =)

  

And here is Trevor’s victory photo to celebrate (his sister hopped in to join the excitement):

If you’ve made it this far, hope my “interruption of the day” story brought some bit of joy or amusement into yours…

Throughout and after this process, I couldn’t help but reflect on “faith” and the implications of searching for the car in the sandbox… How daunting the task seemed initially, but I had just enough faith in Trevor’s reasoning skills as a 4-year-old that more likely than not, the car was indeed somewhere in that sandbox. So at the very least, I wouldn’t be searching around for nothing, with no chance of actually ever finding what I was looking for.

But I still had a choice of whether or not it was worth taking the time out of our busy life to embark on a search for it…  If it was just about the car itself, then “no” because it’s not something irreplaceable or that we can’t live without it; if was about needing a “quest” or an adventure, then also “no” because it’s not like my life or that day was lacking in things to do…

But there was something about Trevor’s earnestness in wanting to find it — whatever was going on in his head to “bury the treasure” only to realize he couldn’t then find it again by himself — and because Trevor is someone I love dearly, and his “development” in say problem-solving skills is something I deem worthy of investment…

And then there was also the sense I had when looking upon the sandbox, the possible impossibility of the task, but also the possibility of the impossible becoming possible if we tried…. If we didn’t try and just walked away, then there would be no chance of this possibility…

For me, it was a small and somewhat silly example of “walking in faith” — but in the bigger picture of my life and the testing/stretching of my heart I have been encountering lately, it was a significant interjection of faith and hope and love intersecting like a Sunday School object-lesson for my soul (think sandbox = life/this world in its vastness and its myriad struggles/our human capacity for understanding things such as the meaning of life and eternity, and the car = buried treasure like the Kingdom of God, understanding or finding a personal relationship God, Jesus, Truth)….and it was what could have been a source of disappointment turned into a fun victory.