Mary Grams of Alberta, Canada, lost her engagement ring while working in her garden back in 2004.

"We looked high and low on our hands and knees," said the 84-year-old Grams. "We couldn't find it. I thought for sure either they rototilled it or something happened to it." And after she speedily bought a replacement, she never told her husband: "I thought for sure he'd give me heck or something."

Recently, however, the ring turned up—on a carrot Grams's daughter-in-law pulled out of the ground.

"I asked my husband if he recognized the ring," her daughter-in-law said. "And he said yeah. His mother had lost her engagement ring years ago in the garden and never found it again. And it turned up on this carrot." (A very odd-looking carrot, at that: "If you look at it, it grew perfectly around the [ring]. It was pretty weird looking.")

Though Grams's husband died five years ago, she plans on wearing her original ring: "[I]t still fits."

Potential Preaching Angles: Perhaps we could slightly paraphrase Jesus' words in Matthew 13 to say, "The kingdom of heaven is like [a diamond engagement ring] hidden [around a carrot] in a field" (v. 44). May we pray for such unexpected moments of joy and discovery as we seek that kingdom!