Keith Miller: The Hope Diamond

A couple of years back, Nathan and I went to the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. We took in with awe the countless fossils that document the history of the world. We gazed at shark teeth, moon rocks and meteorites, all of which are memorable, but one item remains as set apart in our memory as it is in the museum; one of the world's most prized gem stones, the Hope Diamond.
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It truly is an inspiring wonder to behold. God created this stone ages ago and hid it in the earth where it waited until its time had come. In the 17th century, God revealed this treasure to man challenging him to work with skilfull hands to uncover its true value. It was first crudely cut into the shape of a triangle shortly after its discovery in India's Kollur mine. A Frenchman named Jean-Baptiste Tavernier obtained the stone around 1660 and it was later obtained by King Louis XIV and fashioned into a pendant of immeasureable value. During the French Revolution the stone was stolen and cut into two pieces. Now only 45 of the original 115 carats have survived history. Still, the value of the remaining gem was considerable, and thanks to the gifted hands of master jewelers such as Pierre Cartier, the value has been restored to a respectable, if not admittedly diminished, level of the original French Blue.

The very name "Hope Diamond" brings to mind another prized treasure that God has bestowed upon man. A diamond in the rough, this great nation, America, was revealed to our forefathers over two centuries ago. Master jewelers such as Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and later, Lincoln, set about cutting and setting this precious gem that would later become a prize set apart from all others. It was a long, painstaking and costly process to create this masterpiece, but God gave us skilfull stewards with a God-steadied hand to cut the facets that would add value to the stone. Sometime soon after the facets of emancipation and suffrage were cut, a shining, brilliant masterpiece emerged unrivaled in human history. This priceless jewel served to protect the freedom bestowed upon us by God alone.

Of late, the last 46 years or so, it has been the desire of many in this country for our masterpiece to undergo change. Aside from an overdue needed facet of civil rights, much of this change has been to the detriment of our own value. Our schools have traded prayers for guns, and our homes have traded families for single parents. We've traded babies for the convenience of choice, and exchanged our churches for entertainment pursuits. Our masterpiece has been abused and I wonder if we're not seeing the beginning of an even greater fall from grace as a nation. Still, my hope is in the Lord. My prayer is that God Himself will restore and reset our diamond, and that He will harden the stone so that it may never again be cut carelessly; that He will steady the hand of any jeweler entrusted with the care of such a treasure; and that if it is stolen and/or damaged, that He, our Hope and the only hope of the world, will hear from heaven and restore our land, America.