When we were growing up, we used to listen to the 'Just William' stories by Richmal Crompton on long car journeys. One of our favourite family quotes, which is still used today, is one of the characters overhearing another saying, "Wasn't it a bargain?" (with "bargain" being pronounced as a rather bunged-up "bargun").
Whenever I am in charity shops, or at jumble sales, I enjoy rifling through clothes and books and crockery etc. and I am always secretly hoping that I will find something valuable which has gone unnoticed and has been given a price which doesn't really reflect its true worth.
I am always in search of a "bargun".
On a few occasions, I have been in luck.
And when I have struck gold, I haven't minded how much I've paid, because I know it's worth more than the price on the tag.
I read this verse this morning and it reminded me of this "bargun hunting":
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."
[Matthew 13:44 NIV]
To everyone else, this man must have seemed mad. To sell everything he owned in order to buy this field. But he was willing to give up everything else to gain this treasure. He had understood its worth.
He had found a bargun.
But I know that my reaction to God's Kingdom is so rarely the same as this man. I am not willing to give up everything in order to gain the treasure. I don't want to give up my dreams, or ideas, or priorities, or hopes, or opinions, or values, or time, or money. I want to hold on to them.
But in so doing, I cannot 'gain' the treasure: the man in the parable had to sell all that he had in order to buy the field and get to the treasure. He couldn't have them both. And so he gave it all up.
But to this man, what he gained far surpassed what he lost.
Had Richmal Crompton retold the parable, I imagine she might have allowed the man to say of the field and of the treasure, "Wasn't it a bargun?"
