The Necklace: Update

Months ago, I posted an entry called The Necklace. You can click here to get to the archive. It involved a critical conversation with a young lady whose unique pendant gave me a parable moment. It helped to turn our conversation from earthly to eternal. She listened so intently that I invited her to join us on Sunday morning. A few weekends later, she did so and has become a regular attender. She has even brought along a classmate who is her frequent companion on Sundays.

The Necklace was the last time I spoke in depth with her. We are always in the same circle of people on Sunday - from getting on the bus together, finding seats in fellowship and even cramming our growing group into a corner room of our favorite restaurant, we keep one another in sight. But, I knew that her story would have to require a laissez-faire approach from me, which basically meant no approach at all other than to watch and take my cues from her growing interest or disinterest.

On Sunday morning, it happened.

I arrived early. She, her classmate and a few others entered the building several minutes later and made their way over to where I was sitting. We greeted one another and exchanged the usual questions. And then she said, "You know, I think I'm ready. [The classmate] and I have both talked about what we've learned by coming here, and we both want to believe and become [what you are]."

My eyes dilated. "Wow," I said. I pulled her aside and asked if the Canuck and I could schedule some time to meet with her and the classmate this week to further discuss some things. We want to make sure that they understand. She agreed. We will have dinner together on Thursday evening.

This news is like a meteor slamming into a week in which I have felt out of touch with the person who is beyond compare in my life. I am disobedient, unfaithful, ungrateful, insensitive and a general flea market of vices. And yet...he shows me his magnificent faithfulness in a way that I never really expected. He, alone, is capable of drawing men to himself and yet, through the gift of grace, lets me glimpse how he still chooses to make me part of his everlasting story.

The Necklace

We were sitting in a sparsely patronized restaurant, sharing a long overdue meal. I taught her two years ago, when she was an uncharacteristically chatty freshman who could easily take one breath and draw it out for at least five or six sentences. Not much has changed, except for her more mature look and her upperclassman status.

The light reflected something shiny peering out from the top of her collar. I intended to glance at it just briefly, until I noticed that its shape and color flung my mind from China to my Georgia hometown.

Why was its prismatic color and simple shape so familiar?

And then my memory retrieved a vignette from this past summer: a bookstore – not even one I frequent all that often – and a glass case that contains handmade jewelry designed by a local woman who I always thought was one of the most effortlessly beautiful ladies I had ever met. I used to babysit her three children. We would spend hours lost in imagination, they in their fuzzy footed pajamas curled up inside the crooks of my arms and me feeling the youthful twitches of maternal joy and contentment over reading, “The Little Prince.” They are now teenagers, and their mother runs a successful faith-based jewelry business. I was looking at all the pieces she has displayed at the bookstore and noticed one particular pendant that I thought was delicate and elegant. It was Swarovski crystal, cut as a faceted hollowed square with one corner being fastened to a chain by a silver clasp.

Nine months later, that same style pendant was suspended right below the collarbone of my former student.

“Your necklace reminds me of someone,” I said.

“Oh really? A friend gave it to me several years ago. I didn't even know what Swarovski was at that time,” she grinned.

Some moments later, our dialogue hovered over the topic of faith. She said many times that she believes in a “great power,” but never any specific title beyond that. I kept my contribution simple. I spoke the name of the One I love and serve and said that He is different from all others because He made Himself the very sacrifice that is demanded.

She tilted her head while her eyes followed an invisible line of thought. I needed an example. I quietly asked for something that would make sense to her. A parable moment.

Suddenly, her pendant caught the light again, and it all came together.

“It's kind of like your pendant. If you see it on its own, you may think it's quite pretty. But when you compare it to knockoff pendants, that's when the difference is really clear. That's when your understanding of its value makes it even more beautiful. Same with Him. All others are knockoffs and cheap imitations, and they make His gift even more priceless.”

Being from a country in which the entire retail landscape is dominated by knockoffs, she eagerly nodded in complete understanding.

I hope one day that understanding makes its way to her heart -- a turn which would cement a Swarovski pendant and Deborah Lynn Jewelry and The Lamb's Well Bookstore among the pages of eternal Chinese history.