A few years ago, we received a distressed call from our close friend, Barbara. Her daughter, Saki, recently engaged and within about a month of her wedding, had lost the diamond from her engagement ring some time during the day. She had been collecting her and her fiance’s possessions from each of their families’ homes, and delivering them to their new apartment that day, in multiple trips. Late in the afternoon, she looked down at her ring, and panicked when she saw that the setting was empty. Can you imagine, the symbol of your future husband’s promised love, gone, before you even wed?
The ring was vintage jewelry that her fiance, Austin, had specially picked, and the diamond was beautiful and of significant size.
But even a large diamond can seem very small when it is lost in the wide world, and it could be anywhere: her parents’ minivan, her parents’ house or gravel driveway, Austin’s parents’ house or driveway, or the new apartment or parking lot, to say nothing of a store or gas station. Not only that, but she had parked in different spots during the day to make deliveries from the van, and she had to walk varying distances along the sidewalk before turning up the pathway directly to their specific apartment building, and up and down the staircase to their second floor unit. Sometimes she even cut across the lawn to save the time and distance of staying on the sidewalk…
Several families dropped everything to go over and search for the diamond at the apartment complex. It was the one place that Saki kept coming back to, during the day, so we all converged there with prayer in our hearts, and high hopes that the diamond would be found. Saki reasoned that the jewel probably got dislodged or loosened when she was taking things out of the van or placing things in the apartment. Of course, the jewel could have fallen loose at one of the parents’ homes, but given that she had spent more time at the apartment than anywhere else that day, it became the focus of the investigation.
It seemed an impossible task, searching to find the missing diamond in front of the apartment complex with about a dozen other friends that had come right over, shining flashlights in the dark, and searching across the asphalt, under cars, along the sidewalk, through the grass, up the flight of exterior building stairs, across the landing, into the apartment, and through the carpet into every room.
Have you ever shined a light across asphalt at night? There are millions of shiny, reflective, sparkly stones, like the quartz and mica that are ubiquitous in the mixes here in North Carolina. Everything that sparkled looked like a diamond, but nothing we scrutinized actually was.
We looked for hours that night, and many of us came out the next few days and searched long in daylight. As desperation started to set in, I even thought of using our Dyson to vacuum the lawn where Saki had cut corners on her multiple shortcuts! We could suck up any loose lawn debris and then open the vacuum compartment over a sheet to examine the contents of its gullet little by little. The neighbors were already suspicious about what was lost, but can you imagine hearing a machine outside and looking out the window to see a grown man vacuuming the lawn?
“You there—what are you doing?”
“Oh…just doing a little tidying!”
I decided against vacuuming.
For several more days, Austin and others looked over and over for the diamond. He was beginning to talk about ordering a replacement stone, since the wedding was coming up, though we were all still praying that God would show us where the diamond was lying. Hope, in the meantime, was dying.
On the following weekend, I wanted to go just one more time to look for the diamond. My wife, Wendy, was leaving home to shop with our daughter, Tess, and I suggested that they could drop me off at the parking lot of the apartments so that I could search while they shopped. Wendy was skeptical, but I insisted, so I grabbed my rain jacket, (since it looked like we were going to get some rain), and we headed over to Austin and Saki’s place.
By the time we got to the apartment, however, the sky had gotten very gray, and a storm was threatening through a ceiling of dense, dark clouds, with rumbling thunder in the distance. I was resolute. I told Wendy that she could leave me there, and that I would be alright.
“You’re crazy! You’ll be soaked from head to toe by the time I get back,” she said. She wore me down, convincing me that searching for a diamond in the rain would be futile. The water would make everything slick and glossy-looking. I knew, however, that a hard rain could wash the diamond down a stormwater drain forever, so I insisted that I should at least get out and look, “just for a minute!”
As I got out of the van, I was doubtful, and felt a little sheepish. “I must be crazy,” I mused. (To think that the diamond could be found in one minute after so many had looked for hours upon hours—it was crazy! And it was probably resting at a completely different location—perhaps at one of the parents’ houses—but still I felt an inexplicable optimism that God could show me right now). Closing the door of the van, I prayed to God one last time. I said in my heart, “God, you know all things—you know where this diamond is! If it is ever going to be found, please show me where it is. I can’t do this on my own…”
As I crossed the drive lanes to a parking spot we knew was one Saki had parked in, I was praying, and the thought popped into my mind, “Could the diamond look different from what I am expecting, sitting on the ground? Something perfectly round when viewed directly overhead…”
This was my thought as soon as my eyes started scanning the pavement. Within five seconds, I spied a round, quartz-looking stone nestled in a cranny in the asphalt—too perfectly round among a sea of natural pebble bits—and I knew instantly that it was the diamond!
Can you imagine what I felt? The exhilaration of experiencing God, (and it had to be Him), as He drew me to the spot and gave me eyes to see what I needed to see? In my heart I was “walking and leaping and praising God!”
The diamond was upside down in a cranny of the pavement, and didn’t appear clear and transparent, but rather looked whitish. I suppose it was reflecting some of the matrix around it—I don’t know—I didn’t stand there examining the setting. If I had any sense of posterity at that moment, I would have whipped out my phone and taken a picture of it as it sat waiting for me in the pavement.
Bent over and trembling with adrenaline and excitement at experiencing a miracle, I pinched the diamond from its niche, leaped over to my van a few feet behind me, and threw open the door. With a flourish I stuck my arm across the driver seat to wave the diamond in front of Wendy’s face and yelled, “I’ve GOT it!!!” I was pinching the diamond so hard between my thumb and forefinger that it could not be seen…
Wendy, supposing I was playing some sort of sick joke, said, “Jeff, that’s not even funny!” She was already annoyed at the delay and this was no time for humor.
So I placed the diamond on the plastic island between the front seats, and the three of us leaned in to look at what simply could not have been real. I think I held my own breath as if the whole thing was a dream until someone else could pinch me. Wendy and Tess blinked in disbelief, again and again, inching closer, as if to reset their eyes and turn the faceted jewel back into a piece of broken glass handed over in jest. After a few breathless seconds…“Ohmygoodness!!! Is that really IT?” More pauses. I couldn’t speak. I just looked on, dumbly, fighting the tears of gratitude to the LORD for what He had done. “What!?! I can’t believe it—I thought you were joking! I was about to get really mad!”
What a celebration ensued! What an incredible miracle— how it all unfolded… how we had to search diligently, with great patience and, yes, with faith.
In a way, I’m glad that God didn’t show us all immediately where the diamond was… we would have been tempted to think, “well, of course it’s right there under our noses. Nevermind, God, we found it!” No, instead there was this beautiful struggle, this constant fellowship of going back to God and counting on Him to come through, no matter what the odds.
And whether the diamond was to be found or lost forever, the main thing is that we sought and found the Lord, who is precious beyond all the wealth of every kingdom. The diamond that is, even now, set within Saki’s ring, is a symbol to me of searching for and finding God. He is the greatest treasure, but oftentimes we don’t recognize Him in the setting. We’re looking for something more dazzling, not imagining that He can appear common, or lie waiting quietly in the most mundane parking spot. Or worse, we assume that He’s not around, because we’ve given up looking for the impossible. We don’t seek Him with a whole heart, because our hearts doubt that He will deliver us this time, anyway.
I will never forget watching the LORD deliver at the last instant, in the shadow of a storm, meeting me between two painted lines on the barren asphalt.
“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.” Jeremiah 29:12-13. NIV 1984.