Dr. Ravi Zacharias often expresses his debt to F W Boreham. In Ravi’s recently published autobiography, God in the Shadows: Walking from East to West, he tells this story:There is a beautiful story by F. W. Boreham [in which] he tells of a woman who was sitting beside him on a bus. As the journey progressed and the conductor came around to check the tickets, the woman was dismayed to realize that somewhere during the ride someone must have dipped into her purse and stolen two gold coins, along with her ticket.
Boreham reacts by saying how embarrassed he was because he happened to be sitting next to her and she kept giving him a look of suspicion. But thankfully, he said, the problem was resolved quickly when, digging her hands deeper into the purse, she found the coins. Promptly and with a red face she apologized, saying that it was her birthday and this was a new purse her daughter had given her. "The compartments of the purse were more elaborate and ingenious than she had noticed," he said.
Boreham, in his inimitable way, titled his essay "Hidden Gold," reminding the reader in the following words: "Now this sort of thing is very common. We are continually fancying that we have been robbed of the precious things we still possess. The old lady who searches everywhere for the spectacles that adorn her temples; the clerk who ransacks the office for the pen behind his ear; and the boy who charges his brother with the theft of his penknife that lurks in the mysterious depths of his own fearful and wonderful pocket."
Ravi adds, “Often we are not aware of how close we are to that which we need but we think we do not have. In His grace, God has placed some hidden gold somewhere in all of us that meets our need at a desperate moment.”
Sources: Ravi Zacharias, God in the Shadows: Walking from East to West (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan: 2006), 46.
F W Boreham, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Epworth, 1915), 34.
Image: Ravi Zacharias.