A little bunch of keys

A couple of months ago, while sorting through the accumulation of stuff on my late father’s workbench, I came across a remarkably clean little envelope tucked into a box of bits. Curious to know what was inside, I opened it and found a key.

 

Motorists of a certain age may recognise it – it is the key, supplied to all AA members, which would open an AA box, thus enabling stranded motorists in pre-mobile-phone days to use the phone inside and get the help they needed. No use these days, of course, though curiously I did recently drive past a beautifully maintained AA box, painted in its distinctive black and yellow livery.

A motorist in need who had forgotten his key, or with a key he didn’t bother to use, would surely be extremely foolish. So too we are foolish if we neglect to read the Word of God, in which we can find all we need to know of God and of ourselves. But just having the Scriptures is like having an AA box without a key – it is the Lord Jesus who is the key to unlock its treasures. Apart from them we cannot know Him; apart from Him we cannot understand them 

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)

And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. (Luke 24:45)

C H Spurgeon, though still writing of our need to search the Scriptures, thinks of a key slightly differently: ‘The door of the Word only opens to the key of diligence.’

And then I think of another key which, like Joseph Parker, I am thankful I do not have:

 

God holds the key of all unknown,

And I am glad:

If other hands should hold the key,

Or if He trusted it to me,

I might be sad.

 

What if tomorrow’s cares were here

Without its rest?

I’d rather He unlocked the day,

And, as the hours swing open, say

My will is best.’

 

The very dimness of my sight

Makes me secure;

For, groping in my misty way,

I feel His hand; I hear Him say,

My help is sure.’

 

I cannot read His future plans;

But this I know;

I have the smiling of His face,

And all the refuge of His grace,

While here below.

 

Enough: this covers all my wants;

And so I rest!

For what I cannot, He can see,

And in His care I saved shall be,

For ever blest.