A child was traveling by boat when the prophet Elijah appeared to him — not as the fiery chariot-rider of heaven, but as a fellow passenger, a quiet man with an extraordinary secret. Elijah showed the child something no mortal had ever seen: stones of carbuncle, gems that glowed with their own light, precious beyond all calculation.
"Take these," Elijah told the boy, "and bring them to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi in the city of Lod." It was a divine errand — the prophet entrusting a child with treasures meant for one of the greatest sages of the generation.
The child took the stones and set out for Lod. He traveled faithfully, carrying the glowing gems through towns and along dusty roads. But when he came within three miles of Lod, something happened. He passed a cavern by the side of the road. Whether by accident or by some invisible hand guiding him, he dropped the stones into the cavern's mouth.
They vanished. Not merely fell — vanished, as though the earth itself had swallowed them. The child peered into the darkness. Nothing. The carbuncles, with their otherworldly glow, were gone.
The sages interpreted this story as a parable about the treasures of the future Jerusalem. The stones were real — they were the gems destined to adorn the gates and walls of the rebuilt city. But they were not yet ready to be revealed. Elijah showed them to a child because only innocent eyes could bear their light. They disappeared near Lod because the time for their revelation had not yet come.
Some things are too holy for the present age. They exist. They glow. They wait in hidden caverns, three miles from where they are needed, until God decides the world is ready to receive them.