Sermon Illustrations
Unrecognized riches: doorstop or windfall?
An elderly woman went exploring near her village in Romania. From a stream bed, she pulled a 7.7 lb. (3.5 kg.) rock which looked to her like an average stone. Without much further thought, she took it home and used it as a door stop where it sat for decades. Then she died.
When Elena, her relative inherited the house, she wondered if the rock might be a semi-precious stone. She sold the rock to the Romanian state who had it evaluated by specialists at a Polish museum. The experts assessed this unusual stone as the "world's largest Rumanite amber nugget." It's now recognized as a Romanian national treasure worth over a million dollars! But the elder Romanian woman died having no idea her doorstop made her rich! (Note: Ironically, burglars had broken into the elder woman's house and stolen a few small pieces of gold jewelry but had completely missed the precious amber doorstop!)
Isn't this how we tend to view the fantastic spiritual riches God gives us in salvation?