I have been cleaning out some boxes and
drawers in my basement (again) and I run into a collection of old keys. Some
of them were at least 75-80 years old. Then that reminded me of the key collage
that has been hanging on our wall as long as we have owned this home. They, of
course are really only interesting to members of our family. The chain full of
keys on the left hand side are just a bunch of “keys of many kinds.” The ones
in the middle of the frame on the right
were for my childhood home, and my dad’s union desk. It is funny when I think
of it that the house was hardly ever locked and the desk was never unlocked
unless Dad was using it.
It is funny that now none of these keys have
any intrinsic value. However as I am a dedicated pack-rat I seem to keep things
for ever, valuable of not.
As I thought about Keys my gray matter
turned to ward many things. Of course it was the keys in these pictures that
started all my thinking.
So what does the word KEY bring to your
mind? I would imagine a piece of metal of a certain shape to open a certain
thing. Perhaps a door, drawer, padlock, start a car, or many other things. Of
course perhaps you thought of keys on a typewriter, word processor, telephone, credit
card type key, or ATM. A lot of these keys did not exist when I was a youth.
Then there is the phrase we hear a lot, “keys
to the kingdom.” But then this is a completely different kind of key in many
ways, but a lot the same in other ways.
A key whether in a temporal way or a
spiritual way is to give us access to certain things, such as—(Temporal: House,
car, office, telephone) and Spiritual: Temple, certain activities in Churches,
Authority to do certain things in in Churches.
Of course we can lose either temporal or
spiritual keys, however in both cases if we lose them, we may find them and be able use them
again.
Here are a couple of examples that happened
to people close to me: She was at the grocery store and when she came out and
tried to put her groceries in the car, she pushed the little button on the key
ring to open the door. Nothing happened,
and she tried two or three times and still nothing. She was frustrated, she
took out her cell phone and called AAA and told them what was wrong and they
sent a man over to help her out. When he got there she rehearsed her problem to
him. He took her keys, puched the little button and behold the trunk lid (on a
car just like hers that was parked about 6 cars away) immediately popped up.
After laughing, discussing and wondering how often that happened, she offered
to pay him. He just laughed and told her 'Oh No,' you just made my day as he laughingly walked toward his truck.
A similar but slightly different ending
happened to the same woman. She had been shopping and she came out to get in
her car. She pressed the little button on her key ring and nothing happened. She
got a little frustrated (and I wonder if she checked to make sure it was her
car?) She called her grandson and told him what was going on , and would he
come and get her? He told her to try once more before he drove all the way over
there. She tried again, punching the little button as hard as she could this
time. Still Nothing. Then he asked her if the key went in the key slot OK. Well
she never even thought about using a REAL KEY, because she always just pushed
the button and the car unlocked. Of course when she tried the KEY, it worked
great and now the family has another family story to pass on?
I am not sure about others but I seem to
have little keys in my memory bank that remind me of other keys. Sometimes this
is not a good thing because I hop from one to another, most of the night as I
try to go to sleep.
Then there are the picture albums and
journals that can keep you hopping from one to the other for hours or days at a
time. Is that some little memory keys fault?
As I mentioned before, in the Church I
belong to, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”, we either have,
or have the opportunity to receive many spiritual keys during our lifetime. The
first ones that I think of are the keys of the Temple—not physical , but
spiritual keys.
Bro. Kent F. Richards recently gave a talk
speaking about these spiritual keys. He said,”The Lord has revealed the
fullness of the Melchizedek Priesthood, it is found in the Temple and its
ordinances, for therein are the Keys of the holy priesthood ordained.”
A man on Temple Square for a tour asked a
missionary why he could not go inside the temple? The Elder conducting the tour told him, anyone can go into the Temple, if the have all the keys needed to do it. So the
man replied that he really had a desire to go inside, so what would he have to
do? The missionaries response that he would love to start him on the path, but
it might take a year or more to actually receive all the spiritual keys to
enter. The man’s answer was a classic.
He said. “I don’t think I would like to spend that much time and effort just to
enter a building.” The additional information, of course we, “as members of the Church,” know that it
is not just any OLD BUILDING.-----( W.R. Baldwin 29 Jun 2016)
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