Ira Yates was like many other ranchers and farmers in West Texas during the Great Depression. He had a lot of land, and a lot of debt. Yates wasn’t able to make enough on his ranching operation to pay the principal and interest on the mortgage, so he was in danger of losing his ranch. With little money for clothes or food, his family had to live on a government subsidy.
Day after day, as he grazed his sheep over those rolling West Texas hills, he was greatly troubled about how he would pay his bills. Then a seismographic crew from an oil company came into the area and told him there might be oil on his land. They asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a lease contract.
At 1,115 feet they struck a huge oil reserve. The first well came in at 80,000 barrels a day. Many subsequent wells were more than twice as large. In fact, 30 years after the discovery, a government test of one of the wells showed it still had the potential flow of 125,000 barrels of oil a day.
And Ira Yates owned it all. The day he purchased the land he had received the oil and mineral rights. Yet, he’d been living on relief. A multimillionaire living in poverty. The problem? He didn’t know the oil was there even though he owned it.
It is fair to say that you and I are a lot like Ira Yates during this coronavirus pandemic. We are heirs of a vast treasure and yet we live in SPIRITUAL POVERTY.
We are entitled to the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s energizing power, and yet we live unaware of our birthright. We need to rouse ourselves today to remember how rich we really are.
Thanks to Dan Rondeau for sharing
It is SPIRITUAL POVERTY, not a lack of material things, that lies at the core of all human suffering.
What inner resources have you discovered, like a spiritual oil well within you, during these months of the pandemic?
