Mama’s Christmas Pin

     I remember a certain Christmas when I was a child. I’m not sure just how old I was, maybe six or seven. The holiday was fast approaching and gift giving was on my mind. My older brother and I had trudged through the snow down the big hill to the Five and Dime Store in the small Northern Michigan town I grew up in. I can by imagination visualize the scene from that day. I’m sure I had soggy hand knitted mittens hanging from my pockets, stringy blond hair poking out from under a sock hat and rubber boots with metal latches on my cold feet. I recall that I had to stand on my tip toes to see into the big display at the front of the store full of various trinkets marked down to entice thrifty Christmas shoppers looking for stocking stuffers.

     I sorted through many pieces of cheap costume jewelry hunting for the perfect gift for Mama. I wanted the best one. With about fifty cents to spend it narrowed down the choices. But then after much sorting, there it was. It was so beautiful. I had found it, the best one. How shall I describe it? It was an oval shaped pin that was about an inch by an inch and a half with white plastic petals spraying out from the center. At the end of each petal was a small pink glass jewel. On top of that layer was an inner row of smaller delicate petals (also plastic) and then in the very center was a larger pink jewel surrounded by five more pink jewels all encased in plastic settings. To anyone with any fashion sense at all this pin would probably be described in one word, “cheesy”. But to me it was an absolute treasure and my fifty cents would buy it. It may have even been a toy meant for playing dress up I’m not sure.

     I purchased the pin took it home and wrapped it and couldn’t wait for Mama to open it. Christmas morning came and sure enough Mama oohed and ahhhed over the pin. She liked it as much as I did. But that’s not all she did. She wore it. She wore it often. She even wore it out, to work and to church. She wore it proudly as though the stones were diamonds set in gold instead of glass set in plastic.

     After she passed away the pin came back to me. I'm holding it now in my hand. It is still beautiful to me but for different reasons. To treasure the pin in the way that she did was to treasure me.

     We have a heavenly Father who treasures us. Psalms 29:2 says: Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord In the beauty of holiness. My gifts of worship are much like the plastic and glass pin. I have no holiness on my own. But long ago one morning in Bethlehem Town a Savior was born who would carry all my imperfections, all my sin, all my plastic and glass to an old rugged cross and in trade would give to me a robe of righteousness that would turn my plastic and glass worship into the beauty of holiness. God now (because of Jesus Christ) accepts my humble gift of worship as though it were a treasure.