In the story Silas Marner, written by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) in 1861,the main character is a young man engaged to be married, but who is unjustly accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and his accuser eventually married Silas’ fiancé. Silas was a linen weaver by trade, and so he traveled to a smaller town in England, bought a very simple house, and set up his loom to practice his trade. He lived a quiet reclusive life, but his work was so well done and timely delivered, that he had several customers. Some tried to befriend him without success. Silas worked every day at his loom and acquired a small bag of gold coins in savings, as he spent very little on himself. His sad existence was made sadder when he was robbed of that bag when he went out to deliver some of his work. He came home to find his meager belongings ransacked, and he became even more reclusive.

One snowy winter day when he returned home from gathering firewood, Silas saw something in a pile by the fireplace that shone in the light like gold, and his first thought was that somehow his savings had been returned to him. As he ran into the room he soon saw that the “gold” was the lovely curls on the head of a very little girl who was lying asleep by the fireplace. Silas followed the footprints of the child and found her mother, who had died in the snow, and he rushed back to notify the villagers of what had happened. Ultimately Silas was asked to care for the child until someone might claim her. Such a person never appeared, and Silas became the adoptive father to the child he named Hephzibah. and called “Eppie”.

The golden haired Eppie was more truly “gold “ to Silas than any bag of coins. A neighbor woman with children helped him raise Eppie, and the child bonded quickly with Silas. For the first time his house became a home, and his life was forever changed.

The wise men brought gold to the baby Jesus, and there was gold in the tabernacle as well as in Solomon’s temple. The gold displays the preciousness to God of communion between Himself and His people: “I will put my dwelling place among you. . . I will walk among you” (Leviticus 26;12)

Silas Marner’s gold coins were replaced with a living child who changed his life and gave it meaning. Our lives are changed when we come home to discover the limitless value of our living God in Jesus, the purest of pure gold.

Love in Him,

Prue