Unknown keys …

Two days ago, a fellow minister posted this message on Facebook, along with the photo shown above (used with his permission):

“Ten years ago, when A. Doug Smith and I were gathering ‘stuff’ for our 139th Anniversary at Pleasant Grove Christian Church I found these keys; they remain my favorite find since our days of exploring began.”

The combination of the comment and photo resulted in my experiencing a flashback to my first senior minister position in Baldwin Park, California many years ago. Not long after my arrival, the lone deacon in the church presented me with a set of keys after unlocking my office door. On that ring were keys for the different buildings on the church campus, a key for my office, and keys to the parsonage … along with some “unknown keys.”

I asked him what those other few keys were for and he said, “I don’t know, they’ve just been on the same key ring for a long time but I don’t know what they go to.”

I think most of us have had experiences with “unknown keys.”

Perhaps they were given to us at the time we started a job, or a new project somewhere.

Perhaps you’ve experienced what I have — that of having a key or two of my own on a key ring for so long that you’ve long forgotten what it went to! I tried the key on several things, but it didn’t fit anything I tried, and I never remembered what it was for. But I kept the key just in case I would need it.

What really jumped out at me when I saw my friend’s photo of “unknown keys” is how, in life, we often have the keys we need for living life fully and well, but may have been carrying them around for so long without using them that we forget what they go to.

That’s kind of like an important “key” Peter tells us about that can be of great benefit to us on this, the very first day of a fresh new year:

“By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence,” 2 Peter 1:3.

The “key” to a good and godly life in 2024 has already been given to us! God has “… given us everything we need for living a godly life …” The question is, will we use that as the key to unlocking what lies before us in 2024, or will we tote around that gift as if it is just some unknown key?

Scotty