I remember, maybe a dozen years ago, a man on TV with a big bushy beard said, “We are standing over millions of dollars worth of gold. All we need to do is dig it out.”
Perhaps he oversimplified it, but that is about it. People, in order to dig it out can end up spending fortunes and still not recover their investment. In irony, they work against themselves. The more gold that is dug out, the less it is worth… that old law of supply and demand again. The more gold there is, the less it is worth. As it becomes harder to find, the value goes up.
Still, it is an oddity of just how much work a man will go through to avoid working. I mean, it is hard work mining for gold and there are no guarantees. It might cost you a thousand dollars to dig out 700 dollars worth of gold. It can be very discouraging. It can also cause a man and his family to go hungry should they come up short.
Then again, a man may stumble and fall in just the right place to dig up a three thousand dollar nugget. Just not a whole lot of logic to it all.
On the other hand, the guy that sells the machinery to the miner, he makes his money either way. Then there are those people who buy the gold itself. He buys it. Then he sells it again for maybe 5 or 6% more. He will definitely make his fortune. Basically, that is how Rockefeller made his fortune. He let the wild caters risk finding the oil. Then he bought the crude oil, refined it and sold it. He never took a chance and he always made a profit. Every barrel he bought made him a profit.
To be sure, those gold miners need food and supplies. They cannot pick it up off the earth. It all must be paid for and, of course, the suppliers are happy to supply them for a price. That eats into the profit of the miner.
And so it is that a man will give his labor and his life for a little gold. All the while, he will ignore that which is free and far more valuable. Man cannot buy eternal life. But, he can have it free for the asking. All he need do is accept Jesus as his savior and eternal life is his.
It is sort of like the old man said, we are standing in a place where we can have eternal life. However, in this case we cannot work for it. We must not work for it. It is free. If we try to work for it, it corrupts it. We must accept it without trying to earn it. In truth, we do not have the power to earn it.
Mostly, why should we try when it is offered to us free? Jesus did all the work. He paid for it with His blood. What can we add? It is one of the rare things. We acquire it straight from the source. No merchant is involved. No church or store or clergyman can demand a payment. The middleman is totally and completely eliminated. Jesus has paid for it in His blood and He chose to charge nothing in return.
How can any person in his right mind pass up something like that?