(continued from last week…)

He said, “I want a mine of diamonds.” And so he lay awake all night and early in the morning he sought out the priest.

“Will you tell me where I can find these diamonds?” he said to the priest.

The priest said, “Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds?”

“Well, I wish to be immensely rich!” said Al Hafed. “But I don’t know where to go.”

“Well” said the priest, “If you will find a river that runs over white sand, between high mountains, in those white sands you will see diamonds.”

“Do you really believe there is such a river?”

“There are plenty of them. All you have to do is to go and find one, and then you have them.”

Al Hafed said, “I will go.”

He sold his farm and collected the money’s. He found a close friend to assist in the care of his family. He left enough money for his wife and children to live comfortably. Kissing them and telling them goodbye, he confidently said he would return soon, a wealthy man.

He began to wander through many Middle Eastern countries. Finally he went into Europe, when his money was all spent and he was in rags, he felt terrible, he was wretched in poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay at Barcelona, when a great tidal wave came along rolling through the pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffering man could not resist the temptation and he cast himself into that tide, and sank and drowned in the waves.

Al Hafed’s successor led his camel out in the gardens to drink and the camel had put its nose in the clear water. Al Hafed’s successor noticed there was a curious flash in the sands of the shallow stream in the beautiful orchard. He reached down and pulled out a black stone that had an eye of light that seemed to reflect the colors of the rainbow and he took that curious stone into the house and left it on the mantel and then went on his way and forgot all about it.

Not too long after that the same old priest who told Al Hafed about diamonds came to visit his successor and when he saw the flash of light on the mantel, he rushed up and said, ‘Here is a great diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?’

‘No no, it was right out here in our own garden.’

‘But I know a diamond when I see it’ he said ‘and that is a diamond.’

Together the priest and the new owner of Al Hafed’s orchard rushed out on the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers, and found more beautiful, quite valuable gems even more so than the first.

This was the discovery of the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond-mine in all the history of mankind, exceeding even Kimberly in its value.’

Conwell said: ‘Had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar, or his own garden, instead of his wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death, he would have had ‘acres of diamonds.’ For every acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm, afterward revealed gems which have decorated crowns of monarchs.’’

This story reminded me that for each of us there are acres of diamonds. Success is there to be had. We just have to dig in the right place and the place you begin digging is inside of yourself.

All you have to do is dig out those qualities of success and apply them in whatever you do, in whatever your chores are, whatever your hobbies are, whatever your vocation is, you apply these same strategies and you will have acres of diamonds.

(to be continued…)

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