Treasure in a Field, part 2

Today, Ah-Fahr had planted seed in his rocky field - seed that would probably not grow.  He kicked and yelled, threatened and fumed at the rough earthen terrain for several hours.  He carelessly threw his shovel to the ground and scolded his impoverished soil with a waging finger.  “O God of Heaven” he yowled upward, “Here my prayer….” And from a distance one could have comically enjoyed the display of thrashing arms and hopping feet on tipey-toe and a countenance expressing a number of exaggerated lines and tones.

All at once the desperate dance ended and Ah-Fahr stared at his fallen shovel.  There was a field on the other side of Katzrin still awaiting his observations.  Ah-Fahr retrieved his shovel from the earth and went back to the house of his sorrowful wife and six underfed children to eat a little and consider how he would journey again to see the field of yesterday….

Now was a good time.  Now was the best time.  When all slept sweetly in Katzrin.  The farmer led his way with a small oil lamp, past the neighbors, every fifth one, that would ask him no questions in the slumber of their night.  He reached the city gate, shovel in hand, and muscled his courage with a shoulderly breath and expansion of his stocky chest.  He set one foot to the road and strode to his field as a man with a mission.

Ah-Fahr could hear the familiar “crunch, crunch” beneath his feet as he neared the place of the field.  Dry, dusty, rocky.  He felt an unmanly tear threatening to break through his sweaty eyelids.  He choked it down proudly as he reached his destination.  There is was.  A field of course stubble.  Never mind.  Let’s dig, he thought, Perhaps there is good earth deeper down.  And so he dug and dug and dug.

Ah-Fahr was an inch thick in dust and surrounded by a small heap of rock, bristle and straw when his shovel refused to deep any deeper.  It halted with a hard thud pushing Ah-Fahr backward to catch his balance.  The words Ah-Fahr uttered are not repeatable but among them he revealed his thoughts about the hard object that must surely be the largest rock ever found in a farmer’s field!  Only Ah-Fahr would have such a fortune to dig deeper and deeper and find bigger and bigger rocks.

He nearly quit, but, having come this far, he decided to dig around the large rock to see if there were any others.  He began to scrape about its sides to know its size and, upon doing so, discovered that this was no ordinary rock.  It was no rock of any sort at all!  It was a large crate covered in pitch to secure it from intruding natural elements.  Ah-Fahr was surprised, of course, and dug up the crate.

The crate was unearthed and pried open before Ah-Fahr in less than twenty minutes.  So heavy it was that he could not remove it from its hole.  So he sat, gapping at the contents, in the deep hole he had dug.  There before him existed a measure of coin and jewel unknown to any man or woman in Ah-Fahr’s acquaintance.  This useless field contained an unexpected quantity and quality of treasure.  Ah-Fahr whistled long and low and uttered words much more repeatable but too many to record.

Ah-Fahr thought best to re-cover the treasure with his pile of excavated rock and dirt.  He pounded and pressed the dirt into form and leapt to the journey home.  He rushed through the streets of Katzrin, his shovel waving violently behind.  His friends and neighbor all watched him, smirking and commenting with there eyes.  What a sight was the silly Ah-Fahr covered in stench and dirt!  But Ah-Fahr did not mind them.  He raced his way home to sell everything and buy a field with no apparent worth.

As you can imagine, the townspeople laughed when he put his house and his fields up for auction.  Down to the last cushion, his sorrowful wife and six underfed children wore expressions of resignation as it was sold and they would own nothing on which to sit.  But Ah-Fahr gathered his finances and his family and purchased the wasted field hiding treasure….

Today, his wife is no longer sorrowful, his six… um… seven children are all well fed.  And the townspeople?  They don’t smirk or comment or laugh any more.  Ah-Fahr is the richest man among them.  Yes, Ah-Fahr is rich indeed, for, he has given most of his wealth to these townspeople and he has fed all of the poor in the Golan Heights.  Ah-Fahr is a man always looking for an opportunity to pour out his heart on one human life.  Ah-Fahr is a man who knows worth; a man always seeking treasure.

Matthew 13:44

The End.