Looking For Gold

Looking for Gold

Though you lie down among the sheepfolds, you will be like the wings of a dove covered with silver, And her feathers with yellow gold.

Psalm 68:13, NKJV

At one time Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man in America. He came to America from his native Scotland when he was a small boy, did a variety of odd jobs, and eventually ended up as the largest steel manufacturer in the United States. At one time he had forty-three millionaires working for him. In those days a millionaire was a rare person; conservatively speaking, a million dollars in his day would be equivalent to at least twenty million dollars today.

A reporter asked Carnegie how he had hired forty-three millionaires. Carnegie responded that those men had not been millionaires when they started working for him but had become millionaires as a result.

The reporter’s next question was, “How did you develop these men to become so valuable to you that you have paid them this much money?” Carnegie replied that men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn’t go into the mine looking for dirt—one goes in looking for the gold.^a

That aim is exactly the way spouses develop a positive and healthy relationship. Unhealthy couples see only the dirt—the flaws, warts, and blemishes. If you want a great relationship, look for the gold in each other, the good not the bad. As with everything else in life, the more good qualities we look for in each other, the more good qualities we are going to find. In fact, why don’t you take this opportunity to name one specific quality you see in your spouse right now?

Truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn’t gold.

—Leo Tolstoy

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