Right about now James Howells must be wishing he could buy Newport Council’s landfill site. In 2009 he bought some bitcoins and stored them on his laptop’s hard drive. The coins quickly forgotten and in time he threw the hard drive away. But then the value of bitcoins surged and by 2017 he realised the hard drive was worth £125m. Sadly it was also buried deep in the landfill site under tonnes of other rubbish and despite his offer of a 10% donation of the value if recovered, the council refused to let him conduct a search. Now valued at £210m he’s upped his offer but the council won’t budge. If only he could afford to buy the site, he could recover his treasure.
James’s plight reminds me of a parable Jesus once told about the Kingdom of Heaven. He said it was like treasure hidden in a field – a man found it and was so happy he went and sold everything he had in order to buy field.
Sadly, James can’t buy his ‘field’ and his treasure remains hidden. But because of Jesus the priceless value of God’s Kingdom is available to all who go searching.
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