Acres of Diamonds

In 1870 Dr. Russel Conwell, a foreign correspondent for The New York Tribune, was on a trip to Baghdad, to travel along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. On the journey, his Arab guide told him a fascinating story, one he would never forget. After he returned to America he retold the story over 6000 times and earned himself a fortune in doing so. Here wrote a book about it and called it, ‘Acres of Diamonds’.

Here is the story: Ali Hafed was a very wealthy Persian farmer. He had much land, many sheep and camels, and a wonderful wife and children. Ali Hafed was a happy man. That is, until an old priest travelling through his land told him about diamonds. The old priest said they were the most precious things on earth. They sparkle like a million suns. If he were to find these diamonds he would be fabulously wealthy beyond measure. His children would sit on thrones. One diamond the size of your thumb could buy a whole country. That night Ali Hafed was an unhappy man. He was captivated with the thought of finding such diamonds. He asked the old priest where could he find these them. He was told, ‘look for a tall mountain where flows white streams, and there you will find diamonds.’ Ali Hafed sold his farm, left his wife and children and went off to find these elusive diamonds. He travelled throughout Palestine but could find no diamonds. He ended up a destitute and broken man at the Gates of Hercules in Spain, where he drowned himself in the sea. 

Meanwhile, the man who bought his farm was watering his camel down at the stream on his newly purchased farm. It was there he noticed a black rock that seemed to shimmer in the water. He brought it home and set it on his mantlepiece and thought no more about it. That is, until the old priest, travelling through his land, paid him a visit. The old priest noticed the black rock was glinting in the morning sunlight.  He immediately recognised it was a diamond. “Where did you find this rock?” He asked Ali Hafed. He replied, ‘Down at the white stream at the foot of the tall mountain on my land.’

What the farmer discovered on Ali Hafed’s farm became known as, The Golconda Diamond Mine, the greatest diamond mine of that era. The Kohinor and the Orloof, of the crown jewels of England and Russia, which are the largest diamonds on earth, came from Ali Hafed’s mine. There had literally been acres of diamonds under Ali Hafed’s feetall along, and he didn’t know it. Had he stayed, he might have found what he’d been looking for all that time.  

Often what we are searching for is right under our feet. It’s just we are too blinded by the lure of something else that we completely miss it. The Prodigal son went on a search to find his fame and fortune. Like Ali Hafed, he lost his contentment in life. Greater riches and excitement would be his in the far country. But he eventually realised, that acres of diamonds had been under his feet at the father’s house all along. Don’t go searching in all the wrong places, your blessings may be right where you are. 

- Pastor David Goudy