my mother's old watch.

I went to a watch repair store yesterday. I wanted to check out two old watches I have that stopped working. One of them was a Cartier that belonged to my mother, and I had never worn it.

                As I am standing there, I see the repairman looking at it and looking at it, back and forth, with his loupe on his eye. As he explained to me the prices for changing the battery, etc., he asked the one question I was expecting: “Is it real?” I knew it wasn’t—my mother could never afford the real thing--, but I played along and said, “I don’t know, I inherited it from my mother.” It was curious to me that he would not have known it right away. As he continued looking at the watch from all sides, he said. “It is really hard to tell; you should be able to by looking at the name in the back, but it is almost illegible because of the scratches and the gunk around the letters.” He was referring to the old dust particles that accumulate over the years around something that has been etched in. The pounding of the elements had taken its toll.

                Finally, he said again, “Well, like I said, it’s hard to tell. I will not be able to determine that until I open it up and see the mechanism inside.” Just then, a couple of things came rushing to my mind as I thought of our lives in Christ.

                First. Dust accumulates. When we were saved, Jesus etched His name on us, but as we live our lives in this world, as much as we want to keep clean, dust accumulates around it. It gets into the ridges of the etched lines and blurs the letters. We are contaminated by the elements around us, sometimes making it hard to tell whether we are real or not. Those outside that inner circle that knows us best cannot differentiate between the real and the fake in us, because that old dust has scratched the etching. Old dust accumulates, we get scratched.

                Second. The answer is on the inside. It is the only way to tell for sure. Whether we are real or not, is inside, in the heart. It is a good thing that our inner mechanism remains intact, and it holds our value. The problem is that not everyone has the tools nor the knowhow to look. It takes a master repairman. I could never open up a Cartier to see what is inside. Without the tools and the expertise of a master watchman, I can damage it even more, and then, my fine Cartier(ish) would only be a piece that looks pretty, but it cannot tell time. It cannot fulfill the job it was created to do.

                Jesus opened up a lot of Cartiers in His time. And He still does today. Women in pain, women who had lost all hope. The Master R
epairman was able to tell that they were indeed real. Inside, He cleaned them and put a new battery. Outside, He changed their scratched glass and buffed them so they could shine.

                And He can do it for me and you too. Just. Let. Him.