THE LURE OF GOLD

Whenever I looked out of my bedroom window as a child I could see him. He was the silent sentinel, an ever-present reminder of the past. Exquisitely carved out of white marble, the Pioneer Memorial was a gold prospector, wearing a slouch hat, his left hand resting on his pickaxe, and his right hand pointing to the hills. It was an imposing monument, some fourteen feet high, with these words engraved on its plinth: “Where the vanguard rests today, the rearguard will rest tomorrow.”

My home town in New Zealand was settled in 1864 as the result of the discovery of gold in the hills, and in the river beds. Prospectors (known as diggers), arrived in their hundreds by ship along the coast, or walked hundreds of miles across the mountain passes, down through the dense bush. They faced fiercely rushing rivers fed by snow on the Southern Alps, and the heavy rain. The annual rainfall of Hokitika in 1866 was 127 inches! It was hard to keep dry. There were no roads through the swampy, rain forest. When ships failed to arrive with supplies from other towns in the country, they were forced to survive on shellfish and ferns.        The pioneer settlers began by panning for gold in the rivers and the streams. The search led to the sea beaches where the gold had been washed down from the hills. When the easy color ran out they tried hydraulic sluicing of the river terraces with big hoses, or digging shafts to mine the deep leads of payable wash. After many years large companies took over with the construction of dredges that floated on man-made lakes or in the rivers. The search for gold continues to this day. In my lifetime the value of the precious metal has risen from $35.00 an ounce to $1,866.00, making it profitable to mine again. Several gold mines are operating today in my home town.

Some towns that were founded by the gold rushes did not long survive. When the prospectors moved on the towns slowly withered and died. I can remember visiting some of those old goldfields’ towns whose only inhabited building was the local hotel. Various dwellings could be seen rotting away, their yards overgrown by the surrounding bush which was returning to claim its own ground again. The cemeteries are full of the graves of prospectors and their families, who lived out their lives in those towns for nearly a century. I heard stories from old men of the hard life they endured growing up in those parts, trying to make a living. One of them told me how he worked on building the railroad through the mountains. The Otira Tunnel they dug without modern equipment through the heart of the Southern Alps was the seventh longest in the world at that time – over five miles.

My father always kept a bottle of gold dust and a big nugget of gold in his safe. Before I left home he gave them to me and I had the gold turned into a pair of gold cufflinks and a ring. In the old days the gold prospectors would pay for their goods in town with their pay dirt. My great-grandfather, Bartholomew Dowell, was one of those early pioneers. He shipped out from County Durham in England in 1857 to the Australian goldfields. When the easy gold petered out he caught a ship in Melbourne across the Tasman Sea to the Otago goldfields in 1863, where he struck it rich on the Shotover River, and then on to Hokitika in 1865. He invested in the Maori Reserve Gold Mining Company, bought and ran a hotel for thirteen years before acquiring a livery stable.

They came from all over the world drawn by the lure of gold. There were the English, the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish, the Scandinavians, the Austrians and the Germans. My mothers’ family came from England and my father’s from Prussia. They endured much hardship as they made the long journey in small ships all the way from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope. They did it because they were hoping for a better life in a new country. At my father’s funeral I read from Hebrews 11 about how Abraham did not know where he was going. Like all the pilgrims of old who were looking for a country of their own, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one. The end of the rainbow for the pioneers was, literally, a pot of gold. The gold turned into business, sheep and dairy farming, cattle ranching, or timber milling.

The same longing is in me. I left Hokitika looking for a country of my own, following my rainbow, looking for my pot of gold. In that sense we are all pioneers, pilgrims, drawn by the lure of striking pay dirt. We don’t have to leave our geographical home to find our heavenly country. I had to. I had to learn that the journey entailed leaving physically and emotionally. It has taken a lifetime to do that. In order for me to leave my home town, where I was born and raised, the lure of the better country had to be strong. I had to believe that there was gold at the end of the rainbow. I was giving up family, security, a beautiful environment, a business I could have inherited. What made me able to sail away from all of that and traverse the globe to the other side of the world? One answer is genes. Perhaps I just inherited the pioneer stock that freed me to travel. Certainly, growing up with the Pioneer Memorial outside my bedroom window I couldn’t help but absorb its message – travel on, find your destiny, life is on the march, there is gold to be found in the mountains. But the gold that drew me, attracted me, was not the yellow stuff of which jewelry was made.

 “The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are much more precious than gold, than much pure gold” (Psalm 19:10).

“How much better to get wisdom than gold” (Proverbs 16:16).

“Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

“Where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? It cannot be bought with the finest gold. Neither can gold or crystal compare with it, nor can it be had for jewels of gold” (Job 28:15,17).

The Magi, or wise men, of ancient Persia, were skilled in the sciences of their day. They followed their star to Bethlehem and worshiped the child born to be king. They gave their treasures to Jesus, which included the gift of gold. God puts within us a desire “to seek him and perhaps to reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:27,28). It is the most exciting of adventures. It leads from the place of our birth to the heavenly city. We are given gifts at birth, and strike even more pay dirt along the way, if our eyes are open to see the flakes of gold amongst the sand. On a visit back home I took Carrie and Amelia, my daughters then of twelve and eight, to a gold claim where they could pan for gold. They were given a pan with some dirt in it. They had to wash it around and around until the dirt was slowly and carefully washed away and the flakes of gold were left shining in the bottom of the pan. Their excitement increased as the gold appeared and was captured for them in small bottles.

Our pulse beats quicker and our step becomes lighter as we learn to see the unsearchable riches of Christ. In him the gold never gives out. The mother lode is deep beyond our imagining. We can pray that we may “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:18ff.). For in the last analysis are we not all seeking love? Are we not all seeking to become better at loving God and others? Then surely the gold of life is the love of God, made present to us in Jesus. No wonder he said, “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). The lure of gold is strong.

To find meaning and purpose in life we have to be motivated, we need a goal. We need to be lured by something greater than ourselves. The reason many gold prospectors were not satisfied when they found their pot of gold was that their goal was too small. It was confined to this mortal and physical life. It had no transcendent dimension. Our definition of what constitutes treasure has to be infinitely, eternally precious for it to fulfil our longings.