Most likely everyone has a box filled with useless things that we cannot throw away. Usually they are the fragments of one’s childhood or of our children’s childhood. Artwork from first grade, father’s day cards, cheap souvenirs from a family trip, golf score cards, kissing pictures from a photo booth, ticket stubs from a roller coaster ride, a pressed four-leaf clover. These are important things. My heart breaks for people whose homes are destroyed. While one can always buy new things, one can never reproduce a box filled with useless (wonderful) mementos of a time long gone. Surely in heaven Jesus has a box with a favorite tool from His carpenter’s shop in Nazareth, a driedel, a lock of hair, something from His bar mitzvah, a temple coin from Jerusalem, a collar from a favorite puppy.
My box has an old metal dog tag with my name pressed into the soft aluminum. Vividly I remember making it on a machine at Hershey Park. It was in the 1940’s just after the war. My dad put the 10 cents into the machine (a lot of money) and helped me turn the wheel with the letters. Then I pulled the lever that pressed my name. I put it on a string (didn’t have a chain) and wore it about my neck like GIs. It was wonderful.
Jesus wants to press His ID on us. We are already written in His heart. Now He longs for us to allow Him to be written in ours. He wants us to be so like Him we don’t have to tell people we are Christians. They will just know because of how we treat them. He said, “Hereby shall men know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on December 18, 2014
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org