The Boy and the Golden Coin

The kingdom of heaven is like a boy who lived in a run-down old house, in a run-down old town. He never knew of anything greater than where he lived and so had come to believe that life was generally a run-down experience. His father had left him and his mom when he was just a baby, and his mom was a waitress at the local diner. She worked a lot and he was home alone as often as she was at work. One day, beneath a creaky old floorboard he discovered a golden coin. It was dusty and all scratched up, but he could tell that on one side was some symbol and on the other was a face. He hid the coin under his bed and would look at it every night before going to sleep, he was delighted in its golden shimmer, and tried to make out the symbol on the back and the face on the front, but couldn’t understand what the symbol meant or see whose face was on the front. This coin he cherished above all things, and hid it from even his mom.
One day a good man came and knocked on the door while the boy’s mom was at work, and the boy was sitting on the floor looking at his coin. The boy hid the coin and opened the door. The boy was surprised at the man, who looked unlike any man he had seen before, people always looked sad and run-down in his town but this man’s face shone like a bright star.
The man spoke to the boy and said “I have come to find the one who has found my coin.”
The boy’s eyes darted across the room to the place where he hid his coin, then he looked to the man and said “there is no coin here.”
The man replied “perhaps not, but I seek the one who found the coin.”
The boy, overcome by his own conscience, said to the man “I was the one who found the coin, come in and I will show it to you.” Sadly the boy pulled out the coin from its hidden place and handed it to the man.
Then the man said, “young boy, I have come to seek you and not the coin.”
With an excited tremble the boy reached for the coin. Leaving his hand open for the snatch, the man looked round the run-down house, and looked at the boy whose clothes had obviously not been changed for some time. Then he said to the boy, “my child, turn the coin over and look at the face.” The boy did. “Whose face do you see?” said the man.
“I do not know” the boy whispered.
“Look closer.”
Suddenly the boys face lit up, “why its yours mister!”
With a smile the man said, “you are right my child. I left it here so that when it was found it would help the person who found it recognize me, and now you have found it and so I have a question to ask you.”
“Yes, ask anything you wish sir.”
“I ask you this child, to come and follow me, but to follow me you must leave the coin behind, or to say it again, do you wish for the coin of the King or the King of the coin?”
Immediately the boy lept up and ran to the old creaky floorboard, put the coin back, and said to the good man “I will follow you wherever you lead.”
The good man smiled at the boy, took his hand, and told him that what he had given up would be given back to him ten-thousand times more because he had chosen the King and not the Kings coin.