What is of greatest value to us?  What is truly worth keeping and treasuring in our lives?  If we were given the opportunity to ask for anything, just one wish, what would it be?  Today, Solomon has the opportunity to ask God for anything and he asks the Lord for wisdom, for a wise and discerning heart.  True wisdom resides in an understanding heart.  Wisdom is more than mere information or “book learning.”  Intelligence is a quality of the mind but wisdom comes forth from the heart for it is there that we treasure our experiences and learn to sift through those experiences and distinguish what is truly good and useful for life.

     The quality of wisdom that Solomon requests is a spiritual gift that is a fruit of the Spirit of Truth that God pours into the heart of believers.  It is the gift of discernment.  Discernment is the ability to distinguish God’s will, to tell right from wrong, good from bad, useful from useless, just from wicked, wise from foolish, valuable from worthless.  With this quality of an understanding heart Solomon can guide his people, recognize true worth and hidden treasure and lay hold of the best that life offers.

     The kingdom of heaven begins on earth through the gift of wisdom and discernment.  It begins by recognizing what is the “good stuff” of life and treasuring that always in our hearts.  From the good stuff we learn important lessons of love and grace.  When we fill our lives with good stuff then we truly have a sense of heaven on this earth.  The good stuff, the hidden treasures, the pearl of great worth are often not material things but experiences of God’s love and presence among us.  This can be experienced in good friendships, loving relationships with parents and spouses, good memories of beauty and truth, things that affirm us and help us to realize our true worth.  The most beautiful and valuable gifts and graces are discoveries of faith, realizations of things not seen, the resplendence of heaven breaking though our everyday lives here on earth.

     The parable of the dragnet reminds us of the value of a discerning heart.  It is a simple principle:  sort through the things that life’s net brings in, things that are both good and bad, useful and worthless; keep the good stuff, putting it in a bucket to save and throw out all that is not good and helpful in life.  “What was useless they threw away.”  Too often our difficulties in life today lie in the fact that we tend to throw away things that are truly valuable and necessary for life.  Many people throw away good friendships, marriages and relationships with parents and children, their childhood faith and relationship with God.  Instead they hold onto what is painful, old hurts and disappointments, grudges and divisive opinions.  They relive past failures and hurtful experiences over and over again drinking in the bitterness and turning life into a continuous ordeal of suffering.

     If we are to discover the kingdom of heaven hidden in this life’s experiences we need a wise and discerning heart that is able to give everything to life’s real treasures – the gifts and graces of love.  We need to store up the treasure of good friends, family and traditions of faith, hope and love.  We need to dispose of the trash in our lives, clean out the closets of our hearts where we have allowed the clutter of useless things to build up, and free our hearts for what truly gives us life in abundance. 

     The kingdom of heaven is composed of the “old” things in life, the tried and true values of life, traditional faith, traditional family life, traditional marriage, traditional friendships and the “new” things in life, God’s graces that are always making things new and giving us new insights and discoveries into the truth that sets us free.  The old and the new always go hand in hand and we cannot have a well-ordered household without them both.  We treasure what we have stored in the storeroom of our hearts and we draw from our treasury that which gives us the wisdom to make good choices in our lives and to hold on to the good things, the things that really matter.