They Thought it Was Gold

Photo: thanks to Pixabay

You know how it is at the airport TSA. You wait in line for a long time, and finally you get to the tables and stacks of empty plastic bins where you can start readying you and your things for security screening. A collective feeling of “let’s get over with this” permeates the air like Jodhpur smog. Peel off your shoes, your jacket. Make a sweet effort to follow the instructions as you place your belongings on the TSA belt. Locate the bag holding your toothpaste and soap and all those goodies and place it in a plastic bin. If they ask you to display your snacks in a tray as well, try to dig them out of all the nooks and crannies between books, baby toys, diapers and baby blankets. Recall fondly the times when you missed something and nobody cared, and the times when they pulled you over and you had a good laugh with them over your massive bag of salted almonds prepared to last you for the next three months.

Okay now. It’s time to take a deep breath, and walk right on through the metal detector. No beeps? So far so good! Wait with all the other haggard, shoeless travelers beside the conveyer belt as bags slowly roll through the machine, past the watchful eyes of the security guy. The brain part of you is happy that he is pulling off so many bags to be checked; after all, we do want them to catch the bad guys, don’t we! But the lung part of you holds her breath, hoping there was nothing you forgot in your packing which will be labeled suspicious and call you out for special attention.

That was exactly where I was late Monday afternoon. I had tried so hard to make sure my bags would pass through TSA without a glitch and land me happily at our gate to relax. Jonathan and I love the feeling of getting past check-in and security and settling down beside majestic, tall windows where we can watch the planes and the many colorfully interesting people you can see in such places.

We weren’t there yet, however.

I saw with chagrin that although my bag had come through without a beep, Jonathan’s backpack had been pulled aside and was sitting there with a dejected-looking row of other people’s bags. While Jonathan slipped back into his shoes and belt, jingling his coins back into his change pocket along with the nail clippers, I grabbed Joy and my bulging handbag and found a seat where I could re-organize things and wait for the backpack.

We watched among other interesting scenes, two guys waiting as their five to ten large bags of M&Ms were swiped with a drug-detecting wipe while the guard chatted amiably about disgusting new flavors of candy.

After about ten minutes of waiting on the other bags, it was our turn. “Do you have any idea what this is about?” Jonathan whispered to me. “Not a clue!” Without giving us any more suspense, the detective unzipped the front pocket and proceeded to pull out Jonathan’s black Bible. Holding it with both hands, he flipped through the pages and gave it a careful look.

We glanced at his face for an explanation.

“The gold.” He stated. “It showed up as gold. I guess it was the gold edged pages.” The uniformed man returned the Book and zipped the worn black and green backpack back up. “Bye now.”

Photo: thanks to Pixabay

As I lugged my precious daughter and handbag up the corridor towards gate A-2, my heart felt warm at the memory of that precious Book making the machine blink respectfully. “Yes, it is gold,” I thought. “Pure, tested, tried, solid gold! Not just gilded, but gold the whole way through.”

And so, as the hundreds of people milled around us, lazily charging their phones or racing in high heels and flapping bags to try not to miss their flights, I pulled out Jonathan’s Bible and put some of its gold deep into the treasure bank of my heart.

Are you stocking up on the purest of pure gold this week? Hide those golden Words of Life  in the depths of your heart, where it has the power to make you radiant from the inside out.