In another room in the house is a blue metal box with a small lockable latch, though the key is long gone. i’ve had it for years now. In it are things from when i was a boy, memento’s, little things which remind me of someone, or some place i went a long time ago. Like the baseball cards.

There’s only 2 in the box now. There used to be a whole stack, but i suppose i’ve given most away and probably lost a few in moving here and there. When i put my hands on the two which are left i remember how my brother and i used to go to a little package store down the road from our house, and for a nickel or a dime we could buy a pack of Topps bubble gum that came with 3 baseball cards. It was the worst bubble gum there ever was, but the real prize was the cards. One of the two cards i’ve still got is a nearly worn out 1963 Pete Rose rookie card, with Pedro Gonzalez. Over the years, from time to time, i used to stare at the faces on those cards and dream of being on a big league field…all that green on a cool summer evening. Funny how i’ve still got it, and when i touch it all those memories come back. Another thing in my little blue metal box are the ownership papers when i paid off my tractor. That was the day it was mine, and it was so significant. i’ve also got my first magnifying glass that i used to study bugs with. As a kid with an extra nickel burning a hole in his pocket, i won it out of a drop-n-grab machine where you drop the claw and pickup one of many items in plastic, snap together bubbles. That little magnifying glass was the forerunner to a microscope. In that blue box is my first pocket knife my dad bought me when i was 5, and i’ve been carrying a pocket knife every day of my life ever since.

i know another guy who keeps some things. He doesn’t have a box, but it’s a drawer in the night stand, and in it is his great grandfather’s hammer, his grandfather’s hammer, his dad’s hammer, and his first framing and trim hammer… i suppose he just likes hammers. Like myself, he keeps a couple knives, one was his dads, the other was his grandfathers. He hopes to pass them down to his son one day.

These sorts of things are small to others maybe, but to us who keep such a box or drawer of “moments to be remembered”, they’re things which are significant in the process which made us who we are today.

i reckon we all tend to keep things which you wouldn’t think were important really. i’ve got a friend who has the first marbles he ever won. It’s only a handful, but they are precious, not precious like money, but precious as in what they represent. He won those marbles fair and square, but then he ended up having to fight to keep them. The bigger boy decided even though he lost them, he was gonna get them back. My friend went home with a busted nose and skinned knuckles, and a pocket with about 3 hard won marbles too. He won them, and then he won them again…. something important happened inside him that day, and to this day when he looks at those 3 little old marbles, he still feels the pride and courage it took to win them.

Some people think keeping things like marbles, baseball cards, or hammers is just dumb. i’ve been told that sometimes i hold on to the past so hard, maybe for no other reason than it happened to me, it has started to take up way too much space in my head, and maybe i don’t have room to adventure out to something new. i disagree in that those things are important. If we don’t remember our history, which is part of our identity, we lose sight of our own reflection. It’s one of the purposes of an inheritance and being an heir. Purpose, as in the “conclusion of a dilemma that we take action over”. Those little things we keep add to our purpose, describing us as named and designated by God, holding His preferences and standards in front of us to accomplish with all our breathing, thinking, all our feeling, and strength. We are made in the image and reflection of God Almighty, and there are reflections of Him in all parts of our lives, even the smallest things are important. Those small things in my box of valuables are things which describe me, and you too if you’ve got a box or drawer of similar stuff. There is nothing in our lives which “doesn’t matter”. It all matters, it’s all important. Every little rise and fall is relative to our composition, the way in which a whole story is compiled and told again. We are like a work of music, literature, or art, and we are poetry in the eyes of the Lord.

Isn’t that yet another fabulous facet of the Lord to ponder?

What do you think?