My mother has this obsession with bags.  Not just nice bags any bags.  She’s been saving bags my whole life.  She would fold them into tiny little squares and shove them in her pantry between some box and the wall. waiting for when she needed one.  The bags didn’t have to be particularly pretty or even study.  They were all used, and sometimes marked up, crinkled, water marked, food stained, it doesn’t matter..  You know why it didn’t matter what her bags looks like.  Because  “You never know when you need one.”    That’s what she would say.

It seems that my mother always needs one of her bags,   primarily because she can’t bear to send me home after a visit without giving me something to go home with.  I say this in complete love and affection – It’s quite sweet and a little weird.

You see the things she chooses to give me as I leave her home can sometimes be a little odd, odd because they are not particularly valuable.  It not like I can’t go to the corner convenience store and get those things myself – like a bag of barbeque potato chips or one can of Diet Coke.

Sometime the bag is so full of things that I don’t even get to look through it all the way to see what ‘s in there.  There are times I’ve left it overnight.  I know I shouldn’t have.  There was those days I woke up with melted ice cream sandwiches on my counter.  Who know mom would pack  ice cream sandwiches in her bag.  It’s not like I asked for them.  But I am thankful.  I understand she loves me, and my family and that’s why she bags us.

One day while visiting my mom she caught me as I was leaving her house.  “Pam, I have something for you”.   I knew it was a bag and don’t you know my mom came out of the kitchen with this crumbled up brown paper bag.  This particular bag looked like it had been through the mill.  It had wrinkles down both sides and was frayed at the top and ripped at the beginning of a crease where it had been folded for a very long time.

“Ok, ok I said taking the bag and kissing her on the cheek”  I didn’t even wonder what was in it.  It sat in my kitchen overnight and eventually the next day I thought to empty it.  Inside with the usually bag items, half of a frozen pork roast, because she though we might need one, a coffee scooper because she had two and a small box and an envelope.

The note read, “I made my original old warn out wedding ring into earrings for you.”  And inside the box were two diamond earrings.

I was taken back that something so beautiful and thoughtful could be hiding in a package so damaged.  I thought of my mom and how she slid it in there without mentioning i.  Why in the world would she put two beautiful diamond earrings in a food stained bag next to half a frozen pork roast.

It reminded me of what Paul says to the church in Corinth.   He tells them that we carry God’s message of love in clay jars, imperfect and easily broken.

Yes, we are imperfect vessels but we can be just sturdy enough to carry that message.