This afternoon I had finished lunch and was getting ready to write this post, putting the clothes in the dryer so I wouldn’t be distracted. I was headed back to my computer when I suddenly felt pulled to go look for this tripod I needed for tonight.
One second I was walking to the office, the next second I pivoted in mid-step and headed off to my bedroom, to the closet, quietly arguing with myself that I should be writing and not looking for the tripod. The tripod could wait.
For whatever reason, though, finding the tripod became very important. I started looking in my hope chest but the tripod wasn’t in there and honestly I didn’t know where else it would be. I was about to give up and head back to my computer when, once again, something stopped me, turned me around pointed me back to the closet.
In my closet is a trunk I had with me in college. I use it now to hold onto some keepsakes and I hadn’t looked inside it in ages. There was absolutely no way the tripod was in there.
So why was I crouching down and popping the latches to the lid?
Mathew 6:21 says “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Which got me thinking, what do our treasures say about us and our hearts?
What would these keepsakes inside an old, dirty, stained trunk say about me?
I opened the lid and stuck a flashlight inside. There were clothes, old clothes that I would never wear again and I couldn’t imagine why I had kept them. There was an old tool box, old only because I made it when I was in 7th grade in Technology class. My initials are stamped backwards into the metal because I could never get the hang of working with tools.
There was the elephant I sewed in 7th grade Home Economics. Its ear is still hanging on by the weakest of threads. I could never get hang of working with a sewing machine either.
There was a necklace I wore when I was in Steel Magnolias in high school.
There was a library card and a National Honor Society membership card.
And there was a tin that I remembered once held candy, but now held something else. When I popped off the lid, I saw three things: a medal with what looks to be the Virgin Mary embossed on it, a broken (made that way) Little Orphan Annie locket my mother gave me, and a gold cross and necklace.
I had been thinking about that cross for months. I have only ever owned two crosses in my life, the one I wear now that I bought a few weeks ago, and the gold one I was now staring at, the gold cross I had not seen in years and had not worn since I was a child.
When I was little, probably eight-years-old, my mom gave me an Avon catalog to keep me busy one afternoon. She would later tell me that she had no intention of buying me anything in the catalog, but thought I might be interested in looking at the jewelry, even though I had never shown any interest in jewelry before.
So, I guess she was shocked when I pointed out a gold cross in the catalog and told her I wanted it. And I guess she was even more shocked when she found herself saying yes that I could have it.
“How could I say no to that?” she would tell me years later.
I don’t remember what it was about the cross that made me want it. It’s plain, nothing spectacular. I don’t remember the thought process that went on inside my head. I just remember wanting it.
And now here I find it years later, at this point in my life, and when I wasn’t even looking for it.
Here is this reminder on this Halloween Sunday that I have belonged to God for a very, very long time. And that He has always been close to me.
And as it turned out, the trunk was exactly where I needed to be.
I found the tripod at the very bottom, hidden under the clothes.
