Howdy! I got a story for ya’, Valley Family! Our son Ethan is in the Corp of Cadets at Texas A&M. (Gig ‘Em!). Texas Aggies all wear a special ring. That’s how Aggies recognize each other all over the country and do their weird cheers, whoops and hand motions. I think Rita Hanna’s grandson goes to A&M. She’ll know about this.
Meet Kyle, Ethan’s friend and a drum major in the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band. Here he is before the band performed at a football game that Becky and I attended last fall. (He’s the guy directing the band with his right arm raised. If you have good eyes, you can see his Aggie ring on his right hand. More on that in a minute.)
Here’s another shot below. Notice the ring on his right hand with the mace.
OK, back to the story. A month ago, Kyle was on a long hike to the Brazos River with twenty-three hundred other cadets. He’s a wild guy and he dove into the mud as part of a wrestling match with another cadet. (It’s a Corp of Cadets tradition. Yeah, a little strange, but this is Texas.) Not long after the wrestling match, Kyle realized that his beloved ring was gone. He went back to the place where he thought he had lost it and started to dig around. But no luck.
But Kyle didn’t give up. He had to recover his ring. So later that day he went back again to resume the search. And this time he brought a guy from a local metal detecting club. They searched together for TWO HOURS and then just when it seemed like all hope was gone, the machine beeped loudly and lit up. He reached down and lo and behold, there was his ring, mud-covered but no worse for wear. Here’s a picture that Kyle put in the band chat.
All of us were like lost rings. But God himself came to retrieve us because of our inestimable value in his sight. This Sunday at the communion table we’ll celebrate God’s costly redemption of his “rings.” His Son entered the muck with us, died for us, was buried and raised. We’ll gather around the communion table.
Although we believers resemble rings in our high value and hand-crafted nature (we are God’s handiwork), the analogy breaks down in that rings don’t think, speak, reach and move. We, on the contrary, are rings with minds, mouths, hands and feet. Now that we’ve been redeemed, we are to brush off the mud, regain our shine as his image bearers, and WALK TOGETHER in the closest possible association with Jesus our King. In Colossians 4:2-6 we’ll explore an important way we “walk (together) in him” (Col 2:6). See ya’ on Sunday!
Your brother in Christ,
Darren