Mr.and Mrs. Merwin traveled to South Korea looking for treasure.Treasure holds out the promise of wealth, something that one can trade for a larger bank account with which to buy greater comforts or exciting travel opportunities. The Merwins were living in the never-ending way where the greater treasure is found in the Father's agape-love.

In the English language love has so many meanings and applications that I need to use the term agape-love. This is the Father's love for which you can find a great description in 1Corinthians 13. But more about that later. I'm interested in talking about the Merwins and there treasure hunt in this chapter.

They had arrived at an orphanage looking for a baby boy to love, adopt and nurture. Instead they found Stephanie. She didn't look much like a cute little treasure. Her lice infested hair sat atop a scared face and a malnourished body, popping with boils. But the Merwins became convinced that there was treasure to be found in this little girl.They couldn't get beyond the certainty that the Father's agape-love was ready to do a miracle here.

The treasure that they knew and cherished and, choose to pursue determined how that wealth added to the quality of their lives. (Matthew 6:19-21)They knew that wealth found in earthy neighborhoods does not last. It can be stolen, destroyed or lost. They were finding the Father's treasure in the never-ending way. It is His Spirit dwelling in our inner being, where we are rooted and established in love...love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all fullness of God...according to his power that is at work within us. (Ephesians 3:16-21, NIV)

That was the power working in and for them. They had to adopt this little girl.

They packed another suitcase and took Stephanie to their home in Indiana, where supported by their agape-love she bloomed into a beautiful teenager. She was even the homecoming queen and won the citizenship award in high school.

In one emotionally charged night she found Jesus and began living with him in the never-ending way.

She'd come down a dangerous and winding path to get to this point in her life experience. She'd been born into an uneasy relationship between a U.S. serviceman and a Korean woman. Stephanie was a half-breed, not an acceptable mix in a culture that would expel her into an uncertain earthy neighborhood.

In order to get back into the good graces of her family, the highest priority for her family,Stephanie's mother would have to marry a Korean man and get rid of her daughter.

She put Stephanie on a train with the promise that her uncle would meet her at the other end. The uncle never showed up at the end of a long trip. There she was, four years old and standing in the middle of an empty train station ramp.

For some reason, unknown to her, she survived tramping through the open countryside, living in a foxhole and stealing food from whatever field or farm she happened to stumble into.

At the end of three greedy years she'd ended foraging in a garbage dump and joining a child-gang at the edge of a large city. The child-gang introduced her to the ugly trauma of a torturous experience.

Sick with cholera and responsible for her little friend, who she'd found on the street while escaping the child-gang. Hungry and fighting with farmers again for survival, she encountered an angel.

This angel turned out to be Iris Eriksson who, after an unexplainable call from God and a few restful days at her clinic, took Stephanie to a World Vision orphanage.

At the orphanage Stephanie's job was to take care of the babies, since she was one of the oldest children. It was here that she first experienced love when the babies reached out to her as she poured herself into caring for them.

She saw the Merwins for the first time when she'd reached the more independent age of nine. They were picking up babies and holding them close, holding and hugging.She'd never seen adults act like that.

Then they came over to where she was standing. Mr. Merwin gently touched Stephanie's face. Unknown to her, that had been the exact moment when they knew she was their little girl.

The next seventeen years started with a physical cleanup and talk about Jesus. In fact, before they left Korea Stephanie asked her new dad to baptize her in the ocean.

There were some painful shadows, dark memories, lurking around in the secret places of her mind. These were shameful memories of a lost and tortured childhood that were playing hide and seek with the love-light shower from the Merwins. She couldn't let them out for fear that they'd infect the people around her, family and friends, and cancel her immunity against rejection.

Teen age years found her in Indiana, where her father was pastoring a church. Stephanie was working hard to let her Korean memories get lost in some hidden and undisclosed backwater of ancient history. She excelled at school,even winning a citizenship award and becoming homecoming queen,payoffs to the anxiety demons that kept telling her she'd be found out and lose her parents' love.

Then, one night all the demons gathered into a big meeting in her head. She gave into there chatter,which she acted out in a blunt mini-confrontation with her mother and a quick trip to her room.

At some silent point, that broke into her fight with the past, her dad gracefully entered the room and assured her that he and Mom loved her more than she could know. Now, the time had come for them to ask a Father from the other neighborhood to guide her journey. He told her to think about Jesus because he was the brother that could show her the way.

She started knocking on Jesus' door real hard, desperate for something to be done, right now! That's when the tears came, rolling like a tsunami, carrying to a conscious surface all the hurt that'd been chasing her from that desolate train station to her seventeenth birthday.

Her parents responded to her sobbing. She wouldn't let them get close to her, so her dad sat at one side of the bed and Mom at her feet. Mom held Stephanie's feet and Dad gently gathered her left hand into his, and they silently prayed.

Something happened, the realization that the greatest treasure in the whole world was Jesus' acceptance and love for her.

Stephanie had come along way from a dump filled with litter, once new and usable stuff that people had taken the best parts out of and pressed into hills of wet, stinky trash. It was there where in this forgotten edge of an earthy neighborhood her angel had shown up in the person of Iris Eriksson. She frequented the dump looking for babies, or very young children. Stephanie didn't fit any description of what she was looking for. It was on that uncomfortable night that she understood that Stephanie was a daughter accepted in two neighborhoods.

Another neighborhood was activating in Stephanie's favor, grace-mode, and Iris just couldn't get that urging out of her head to take Stephanie.

It was at that orphanage that Stephanie became a daughter in an earthy neighborhood and would later learn about a Brother and Father, from another neighborhood who loved her very much.

As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. (John15: 19, NIV)

The journey had continued. It had taken her through some years of healing, where the demons were cast out and she could at last love the new self that was being born.She'd transitioned into grace-mode.

Grace-mode has led her into a career where she counsels women who are dealing with histories of abuse.

This story always reminds me that there is a place in one's journey for treasure auditing. How am I allowing agape-love to flow into my thinking and behavior? When I select edit I look for ways to actually change my behavior so that agape-love is lived out in all that I think and do.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It  always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1Corinthians13:4-7, NIV) We'll talk about these workers in a later chapter.

John writes (in the Bible)about the Father who sent His Son on another treasure hunt, from His eternal neighborhood into the world's earthy neighborhoods, looking to invest His agape-love into people and give them eternal life with Him in the never-ending way. (John 3:16)

It is clear to me that the Father's agape-love is the river of life that flows through both neighborhoods, bringing the best of its treasure to hearts and minds of those people who are open to its works.

When life bumps into some unhealthy shadows, sharp and prickly, the treasure doesn't go away.Agape-love is the only valuable resource that is usable in grace-mode to reach into the dark depths of despair and light the way for overcoming life's intervening challenges.

This thought brings us to the next chapter where someone looses his way, a marriage is torn apart and a question asked that will determine a couple's future. Is restoration possible?