An Emerald in His Crown

I’m staring at my grandpa’s giant slate-blue linen dictionary that weighs at least ten pounds and is about six inches thick. This isn’t an ordinary dictionary. It’s a Greek-English dictionary that gives the English definition of every Greek word and traces its etymology back to the earliest known Ancient Greek usage ever recorded. If you ever want to know the history buried inside a Greek word, this dictionary has it.

I got this book out because I’m in the throes of a very deep exploration and treasure hunt surrounding one of my favorite birthday presents. Each year as my birthday approaches, I start asking God for a birthday present. When I turned 39, He gave me a horse, and it radically changed my life. When I turned 40, I was feeling a bit old and frumpy and decided I would go to Victoria’s Secret, buy myself all new bras, and throw away my old ones. I had never bought a Victoria’s Secret bra before and never thought I could spend $40 on a bra.

A woman saw me searching and asked if I had ever had a bra fitting. I told her I hadn’t, but I was turning 40 that day and thought I probably should. So we went in the back, she brought out her tape measure, instructed me to lift my arms in the air, and started measuring all around me. She quickly reported, “You are a 32D, my dear.”

I was shocked! 32D!! I had been a 34A or B my entire life except when I was pregnant or nursing. 32D was my dream size! Happy birthday to me! I took my new bra size and the bra fitting as my birthday present from God that year. It made me feel young and sexy again.

The next year I was turning 41, and I had been asking God for a birthday present and waiting with great anticipation. The morning of my birthday I heard Him say, “You are an emerald in My crown.” I wrote it down and waited for more. Then I heard Him say, “Read Matthew 13:52. This is your birthday present.”

I was so excited I could hardly wait to flip open my Bible and start reading. What joyous, amazing verse did the Lord give me for my birthday? I found verse 52 and read, “And Jesus said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old.’”

Huh?!

To say I was a little let down is an understatement. I started wondering if I had made up this entire birthday-present thing. I thought, Okay, cool. Go scribes. Happy for you. You’re like a head of a household and you grab your old stuff and your new stuff. It made zero sense to me. I read the whole chapter trying to understand why this verse would be significant or have anything to do with me or my birthday. I definitely didn’t see anything about emeralds or crowns. Just a bunch of parables that most people didn’t understand.

So I decided to read the verse in Greek to see what I might be missing. This is the Greek translation: “Every secretariat that accepts and remits the kingdom of God, is like the rich person who draws from the treasury the new and the old from the storehouse.” As I began digging into the Greek words, the verse started opening up in an entirely different way for me. The word translated “scribe” is grammateus. I looked up the word scribe in Greek and saw that it was grafias, from the verb grafo, or to write. This was a clear mistranslation. The mistranslation would make us believe the verse means that those who transcribe scripture are giving us treasures of old and new in the word of God. But what did grammateus mean? In modern Greek and biblical Greek the word is translated as secretariat, which means the administrative office of a government. An earlier meaning of grammateus means a promissory note. This changes everything!

Suddenly, I was on a treasure hunt.

The entire thirteenth chapter of Matthew is about the kingdom of heaven. Jesus repeatedly speaks in parables about a kingdom that is present but hidden, something immensely valuable that not everyone can perceive. He speaks about mysteries of the kingdom and tells His disciples that they have been given the ability to know them. Then He arrives at verse 52 and describes someone who has been instructed in this kingdom and is able to bring treasures out of a storehouse.

As I prayed and studied, I began to understand that grammateus was something much bigger than the mistranslation of a scribe. A secretariat, or an administrative office representing a kingdom and carrying its authority into the world. This became deeply personal to me. I began to understand that we are called to represent and administer the kingdom of heaven here on earth. We become, in a sense, a promissory note of heaven’s currency, evidence that another Kingdom is real and that what exists there can be released here.

But there is a condition. We have to receive the kingdom before we can release it. Acceptance and remittance.

What are we receiving? It begins with believing in the kingdom, its power and glory, its authority and dominion, and then actually engaging with it. Most importantly, it means spending time with the Almighty King of this kingdom so that we know His character and the culture of His Kingdom. Then what we receive, we remit. We release it. We give away what we have been given. We administer the commodities of heaven: healing to the sick, freedom to the captive, hope to the hopeless, provision to the poor, sight to the blind, and love to the unloved. We become a kind of bill of exchange, bringing the Father to the fatherless.

But there is a second half to the verse. Jesus says this person is like a wealthy head of a household who has access to a treasure store and can pull out things both new and old.

What are the new things? Things that have never been seen before. Creative things. Things the Creator creates in the moment. Innovations. New revelation. New hearts. New eyes. Technology that has never existed before. Brand-new art!

And what are the old things? Ancient things. Land. Gold. Ancient promises. The Garden of Eden. The Tree of Life. The things that existed in the heart of God before we ever arrived here. And most importantly, we have access to Him, our true love, the fiery One, the glorious beautiful One, the lover of our souls, the Word, the Ancient of Days.

By now I was getting so excited about this obscure little birthday verse that had initially disappointed me. I kept digging through my grandpa’s dictionary, following the etymology and ancient uses connected to grammateus. Then I found another connection that stopped me cold: I read in my grandfather’s dictionary that the earliest meaning of the word grammateus was a multifaceted emerald stone, which brought me right back to the emerald God had spoken to me about that morning. I also remembered the 3rd stone on the priestly ephod was an emerald and represented the Levites, who served and administered the things of the temple. This means even the Greek word preserves the deep meaning of secretariat. Grammateus is an emerald in ancient times, the symbol of the Levites, the administrators, then later becomes a promissory note, and then becomes the secretariat in Jesus’ day.

And suddenly I was right back where I started: “You are an emerald in My crown.”

I was totally shook. What started out as the lamest birthday present ever turned into one of the deepest treasures God had ever given me. His poetic, beautiful ways astounded me that day. And then there was one more connection I couldn’t ignore. I was born on May 3, 1973, the year Secretariat won the Triple Crown. Whether that was simply a beautiful coincidence or another little signature from God, it made the whole discovery even more meaningful to me. I felt as though this idea of being a “secretariat” for the Kingdom, pulling out treasures both new and old, had somehow been woven into my story from the very beginning.

Over the years, I have held tightly to my 41st birthday present. And now I believe I understand another part of why God gave it to me.

I believe we are creating something like an Emerald Zone within this art community, a place where artists learn to access the storehouse of heaven and bring out things both old and new. We encounter ancient truths and create things the world has never seen before. Through beauty and through the art we create, we offer the world a promissory note from heaven, evidence of another Kingdom and another future.

Maybe this is part of the spiritual calling of the artist. We reach into the unseen and bring something back. We take what was invisible and give it form. We pull something out of the treasury and put it on a canvas, into a song, a poem, a sculpture, a story. And when what we create carries the nature of God, beauty, hope, freedom, truth, love, it doesn’t merely decorate the world.

It releases into the world a glimpse of what the world can become.

Footnote: If you google the meaning of the word Grammateus in Greek one of the very first internet entries is from Strongs saying that it means: Scribe. However if you go to a real Greek dictionary it says Secretariat. If you google the meaning of the Greek word grafeas, it means scribe. If you ask google to give you the Greek word for secretariat, it says Grammateus.