PASTORS THOUGHT: Sharp lessons learned in life

By TOM BALLARD

Most of the boys I grew up with had a pocketknife. We were allowed to carry them to school as long as we kept them in our pockets. We sometimes traded pocketknives, compared whose was the sharpest by shaving our arm hairs and secretly used them as emergency pencil sharpeners and screwdrivers.
I’m still carrying my three-blade Buck that I bought while I was in high school. I’m so attached to it that if I were to inadvertently keep it in my pocket while boarding an airplane flight, I’d cancel the flight before giving up my knife.
I’m sure most young men and teenagers don’t carry a pocketknife with them like guys did when I was growing up. Schools won’t allow them because they are subject to be used as weapons instead of pencil sharpeners. Some do-no-gooders are intent on carving on each other rather than peeling an apple.
Besides the one in my pocket, another of my favorite knives belonged to my grandfather Purkey. He knew what a keepsake and family heirloom it would be to me. Each time I look at it, I see more than a pocketknife. I see him.
I remember how he taught me how to fish with a cane pole and to spit on that night crawler for good luck. I still see the black lunch pail he brought home every night after spending the “graveyard” shift in the zinc mines of Jefferson County, Tenn. I can taste the triple-layer peanut butter and soda cracker sandwiches that he would make when he packed us a lunch.
Those were the days that some soda crackers came in a perforated square of four, about the size of a slice of light bread. That one pocketknife has so many stories behind it.
It does sort of make me wonder what kind of heirlooms I’m leaving my children. Though they are growing up mighty fast, I hope that their inheritance will include wonderful stories and not just “things” like pocketknives.
I hope that they will recall relationships instead of objects. Relationships and stories will see us through so much; stuff can evaporate in a split second.
Jesus once told a story about an inheritance. It had to do with two brothers, the younger of which asked for his inheritance up front. The extravagant father went ahead and gave him his cut while the older brother stayed back and worked faithfully on the farm.
The younger quickly blew the inheritance with nothing to show for it. The older was simply waiting for his father to die, surrounded by the abundance of the family farm. The younger son found his way home and quickly reconciled with a merciful and forgiving father. The older grew impatiently jealous, envious even, of the father’s overwhelming love for the wayward son.
There are many lessons in this Prodigal Son parable of Jesus, but one of the lessons has to do with true inheritance. In the end, it wasn’t the crops or the livestock or the barns that were important. It was the relationship between family members. In the end, it’s more than a pocketknife. It has to do with that unique bond created by a grandfather showing grace toward a grandson.
It does make me wonder just what kind of inheritance my generation is leaving for our descendants. I just hope it’s worth holding onto, not so much in their hands, but in their hearts.
The Rev. Tom Ballard is Senior Pastor of St. Paul United Methodist Church in Wytheville.