“This___ (weather vane, cream pitcher, hand-made desk, duck decoy, book) is a family treasure. It is priceless!”
If you are a fan of the TV series Antiques Roadshow, you’ll recognize the statement above. Words like it are said each week as families bring generations-long treasured items in for expert appraisers to admire, give history of, and estimate monetary value.
If you don’t watch Antiques Roadshow, you might shop at thrift stores, saying, “I’ve got to buy this! It looks just like the one my grandmother inherited from her family.”
Maybe you hang out at auctions, overhearing another variety of treasuring family heritage: “This old rifle is almost like what my great-granddads carried in the Civil War.”
Or maybe you stop at garage sales, hunting for a special piece fishing lure, piece of beaded leather or pottery, then saying, “This reminds me of growing up…I’m getting it. To me it is priceless.”
It seems things can keep us mindful of tradition, family stories, and memories. They can also give us glimpses of dreams for better life or just sustainable life. An old baseball card from a shoebox may tell us that factory work in the early 1900s was unbearable, but the fun of baseball helped ease the struggle. A beat-up looking chest may give insight into immigrants leaving one terrain in ship or train or wagon, then arriving in unfamiliar terrain. A tanned buffalo hide with hand paintings on it may tell us of ancestors being confined in small reservations rather than left to roam with the seasons. A pickaxe might remind us of a grandfather’s coal mining or a great-grandmother’s gardening in stony earth.
It seems we know to value these things, but the things aren’t what kept our ancestors sustained in what they faced.
Recently I overheard a man say, “I’m so grateful for the faith in God that my grandparents taught me.”
His companion responded, “For me it was my uncle. He always prayed thanks, even when there was almost no food on the table for his large family. What kept him who he was, was his trusting Jesus.”
A friend sitting across from me in the Duluth restaurant, also overhearing, said, “My family snuck in illegally, from Canada, almost a hundred years ago. They made it, they always said, because snow meant they could use a sled to help pull the children and their few belongings, and because no matter what happened, the arms of God were holding them. I remember they always went to church.”
The woman next to me, who I’d only met that day added, “My great-great-grandparents found out and taught their children, who taught the next generation, who then taught me, God’s Holy Spirit finds a way to comfort, encourage, and change them—they always talked about God.”
How valuable this overheard conversation became, moving from table to table. Then we heard another group begin stories of faith learned and carried, faith that teaches and carries. I’ve wondered since, how many folks ended up telling later, “Guess what came up today? God’s gift of faith—It must be priceless.”
Each time you look at a favored family bowl or photo or outboard or toy or book, think about the faith of those who held them. What you find will sustain beyond any fond memory or appraisal-value. As we sing in one of our hymns, “Faith of our fathers…faith of our mothers…faith of our brothers, sisters, too…faith born of God, O living faith.”
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Pastor Kris Garey, Trinity Lutheran Church, Hovland.
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