Buried Treasure!

Ah, tis the season. . .tax season, that is. So, can you guess what I was doing Saturday? I spent my day off digging through paper bags full of old bank statements and receipts, that's what. Not my idea of fun, let me tell you--especially since another financial institution bought out our old bank about eight months ago and in its wake created a paper mountain for me to climb.

During the transition from one bank to another (and then another institution entirely when we finally got fed up with the whole regamarole of the old one!), we received a daily slew of correspondence, and most of it I classified as "junk." You know, privacy statements and form letters concerning new financial agreements and yada-yada-yada. I just hadn't gotten around to throwing the stuff away. For the sake of caution, I decided I ought to look at each piece of mail one more time before I shoved it into the shredder, even though I knew by the envelopes I wouldn't be needing them. I came across one envelope, however, that had never even been opened when we originally received it in late August.

I ripped one end off the envelope and dumped its contents in my lap. Imagine my shock when, instead of another addition to my trash collection, a CHECK floated out. I probably shouldn't say here just how tidy the sum, but it had a number higher than either of my grandkids' ages at the beginning and more than two zeroes at the end. Okay, so the amount is not enough to announce an early retirement or anything like that, but enough to insure our summer vacation trip plans, at least. Evidently, the "old" bank had held this amount in escrow for our mortgage and in the transition had caught the non-reimbursement oversight. Wowsa. When I showed the letter and check to my husband, he started whistling the tune, "We're in the Money!" (Side note: When I went to the bank to deposit it this morning, they wouldn't accept the check since it was more than six months old. Now we have to wait for them to cut us a new one. Aargh! But that's beside the point.)

Here at work, we're surrounded by reams of paper. Stacks. Mounds. Piles. But I know from experience that a gem might be hiding in those piles, so I'm determined to give each proposal more than a cursory glance.

Can you think of a nugget of wisdom or precious spiritual insight you've gained by digging deeper in your own reading?