Heirlooms

A word about Heirlooms.

Yesterday my wife told me that she needed my help. She said that out in one of our storage areas there was a large plastic tub container with pictures and picture frames that she wanted me to bring into the house so she could go through them. She said they’re too heavy for me, so you’ll need the hand truck. Well, she was right, a ton of pictures. When I brought them into the house, my wife and our son sat for two hours, slowly going through those framed pictures of our family, friends, scenes from our past. We’re in the throes of it, you might say. We are literally deciding, almost on a daily basis, what to keep and what to get rid of. We’ve been married for 58 years, and you can you can gather an incredible amount of stuff in that length of time. You can take a lot of pictures. So much deciding that has to happen. I’ve distilled my own thinking into three buckets in my mind to help with that process. One bucket in my head, I mark get rid of it. Stuff to sell on a yard sale or take to the goodwill or down to the mission, but get rid of it. The second bucket in my mind is what I call the heirloom bucket. It’s memorabilia I want to leave behind that sort of documents or memorializes my journey on this planet. Sentimental things, you could say. And the third bucket is what I’ll call the inheritance bucket. That one takes a lot more thought and attention. Those buckets of mine create tension when it comes to deciding about pictures. When my wife looked again at some of those old photographs, she could remember some of the days they were taken, the circumstances, perhaps even something someone said. She remembered the person behind the picture. Tough for us to get rid of those pictures, except well, except that my kids or my grandkids will probably look at those same photographs after I’m gone and see only people they don’t recognize or places they’ve never been. To my wife and I some of the things we want to pass on to our kids and our grandkids are treasures, maybe even heirlooms. But I suspect that to them some of those things may just be stuff that has no meaning. I think that’s the difference between an heirloom and an inheritance. The difference is the story. In Joshua chapter four, when Israel crossed the Jordan River, God instructed Joshua to have twelve men carry twelve stones out of the riverbed and arrange them as a memorial. Those walks weren’t extraordinary, they weren’t valuable gemstones, they were simply rocks from a riverbed. But God said there was an important reason for those stones. In the future, your children will ask, What do these stones mean? said God in Joshua chapter 4, verse 6. What made those stones valuable was what they represented. Those rocks were reminders of something God had done, reminders that required an explanation. The stones were not an inheritance. The inheritance was the testimony, the story behind the stones. Some of the pictures in that tub I brought to my wife remind me of people of God that He used to change my life. Some of those pictures are scenes that record a moment when God’s faithfulness was particularly evident. And there’s another reality worth noting about that story in Joshua chapter 4. God didn’t tell the Israelites to collect the stones so that they could admire those stones or collect those stones. He told them to gather those stones so that future generations could hear what God had done. An heirloom, I believe, is something someone leaves behind, but an inheritance is something someone receives. For certainty, I’d like to leave my kids and my grandkids meaningful heirlooms that they can hold in their hands. But the treasure I am asking God to help me sort out involves the story behind God’s grace in my life that I will leave behind, a story of inheritance that they can hold in their hearts.