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It’s the kind of moment we might like to dream about. A family heirloom we’ve seen every day for ages and simply taken for granted turns out to be worth a small fortune, maybe a million or more. I imagine the reports this week of just such an event in a London flat got many householders taking a fresh look at what’s hanging around, and allowing themselves at least to wonder…. In this case the painting, bedecked by letters, postcards and bills, was recognised by an expert valuer as the work of the South African artist Irma Stern. Her pictures have apparently been selling for serious money in recent years, and this one was even more compelling because of a fascinating back story. In the late 1950s, a previous owner had donated it to a charity auction which raised significant funds for the defence of Nelson Mandela and other ANC members facing the death penalty in their trial for high treason. Here was a link with a major piece of social history simply not noticed for what it was, seen but not understood, and in danger of being buried beneath the debris of everyday life. Not any longer. I admire experts who know their fields so well that they can identify the value of some rare object on sight. But I confess I’m in awe of people who recognise the true worth of other human beings, often submerged beneath a pile of rubbish that life has thrown at them. They pour themselves out, maybe, to care for disruptive youngsters who leave a trail of mayhem wherever they go; or for men and women existing day and night on the streets, who’ve lost their homes, and often their battles with addictions, and their self-respect. They work to give prisoners new beginnings, or they go on performing menial tasks for individuals no longer able to respond, lost in a mental wilderness. I marvel at such people, who often seem to keep going year in and year out. Whatever their beliefs, in their very persistence, I think, they’re affirming something close to the heart of the teaching of Jesus, that the least likely, even the most disreputable, still possess infinite worth. And more, that it’s often through them that the activity of God is unveiled. Jesus makes a despised Samaritan the hero of a story about compassion; offers a welcome to women more used to public shame; holds up children (very much to be seen and not heard) as the keys to understanding the ways of God; promises a dying thief paradise, and his own executioners forgiveness. Discovering this radical way, he says, is like finding a field with hidden treasure. It makes sense to spend your last penny on it.….not to mention the family heirloom you’d stopped noticing.