Are you a holy aglet?

Some of the most brilliant ideas are hatched from practicality. Take, for example, the aglet.

You know that very small piece of plastic at the end of your shoe lace? That’s an aglet. You never give it a moment’s consideration … until you lose an aglet. The result is, the end of the shoe lace frays and you have great difficulty getting the lace through the holes to tighten up your shoes.

The word aglet (or aiglet) comes from Old French aguillette, meaning “needle.” This comes from acus, a Latin word for a needle. An aglet is thus like a small needle at the end of a cord, defining the function it retains until today

Aglets have been around at least since the days of the ancient Roman empire, only back then they weren’t made of plastic. Originally aglets were made from metal, glass, stone, whatever else could be shaped as necessary. Rich people would have aglets made of precious metals like brass or silver. Aglets were used in place of buttons at the end of ribbons to help fasten closed a person’s clothes.

Without that cheap little piece of plastic at the end of laces, ribbons, or whatever it’s attached to, things become frayed, unraveled, causing the function of larger things to fail.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is a little like being an aglet used by the Holy Spirit. God puts us little ol’ Christians at the tip of a lost person’s life, attached to a message of reconciliation. As the disciple weaves themselves, and the Gospel, into the lives of the lost, the message of God’s Word is like a needle sewing up the broken and reconciling the lost to the Lord.

“And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!'” 2 Corinthians 5:18-20.

Are you weaving yourself into the lives of the lost with God’s message of reconciliation? Are you making yourself available to God for Him to make His appeal through you?

Scotty