There was sadness in his eyes as he looked at me, “I long to return to my native place!” he said. I looked at his son with whom he lived, “Let him return!” I said and I saw the old man’s eyes light up. With a heavy heart, his son took him back.

It was a month later or maybe more that I visited them again. “Dad’s back!”

I went and met him as he looked at me, eyes filled with tears, “I missed them,” he said, “I missed my family, and do you know what I found out Bob? That love most often is just where you are!”

As I walked home that day, I thought of that old story which we’ve heard very often, which comes in so many forms but which I’d still like to repeat today, both for your sakes and also mine, because so often even I forget that love in great abundance is right where we are and not in some ‘native place’. Ah well the story: 

There once lived not far from the River Indus, an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed who owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and wealthy man. One day there visited this old farmer, a strange looking one eyed man who told Al Hafed that if he had a handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole country, and with a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of his great wealth.

Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and went to bed discontented because he thought he was poor. He said to himself: “I want a mine of diamonds!” So he lay awake all night, and early in the morning left his farm and family, borrowed money at interest and away he went in search of his diamonds.

He searched and at last when his money was all spent, he stood on the shore of a bay when a tidal wave came rolling in and the poor, afflicted, suffering man threw himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise again.

One day, many years later his children by accident digging into the rough earth found diamonds more magnificent in all the history of mankind, exceeding even the Kimberley in its value in their own backyard, so goes the tale.

And as I walked home, I felt glad that the old man I’d just visited, unlike poor Al Hafed in the story, realized where his real diamonds lay! In his own backyard!

Are you one of those longing to return to some ‘native’ place, when the diamonds of love are right where you are?