Just a paper clip

 

It’s just a paper clip, so old it’s kind of corroded with a texture of rust. I’m working on collating the information gathered by my mother and other relatives on our genealogy. It’s a massive task, as three lines stretch back over twelve generations, and there are stacks of newspaper obituaries, letters, diaries, certificates …

This paper clip came off one of many envelopes, holding together a couple of notes Mom made on who was a cousin of who? Or should that be whom? … To me, there is a poignancy about removing that paper clip which Mom used, and, after re-entering the information in my comprehensive album, discarding the envelopes, with her familiar, graceful handwriting.

Last night I read an essay – or maybe it was a debating speech – written by my great-grandmother in 1890, just before she graduated from high school. I have to say I was pretty shocked at her views on immigration … and wonder how she felt a couple of decades later when one of her daughters married a German immigrant. Maybe we can talk about that in eternity.

But I digress. She literally pinned the pages of her writing together with a straight pin. Other pieces of creative writing and her diaries are also pinned together. She used what she had.

It was strangely moving to think that possibly that pin has never been removed since the day she pinned the pages together, over 130 years ago. Maw, as they called her, died before I was born, so I never knew her. I wish I had.

Connections. Paper clips and pins hold things together; Jesus holds me together. Two devotionals this morning have drawn my thoughts to our Saviour. The importance of the word ‘with’ in the gospels: Jesus was, is, and always will be with us. In our sad times and in the joys. And the way that, even when hanging on the cross in agony, he responded to the repentant thief with love, offering hope for his future. Today you will be with me in paradise. The comment was made that when we are in extremis, we expose our true selves, and Jesus, who could have been full of anger or vitriol instead overflowed with mercy and love, offering hope to the thief beside him.

I am encouraged to rejoice again that Jesus can be trusted to be with me in every situation in my life, and I am so grateful that the essence of our God is pure love, merciful, sacrificial love.

Hosanna and Hallelujah.