The Locket

     There are times when you see the sovereignty of God at work more clearly than others. The story of my daughter-in-law's locket is one of those glimpses of grace. Too beautiful to be written in prose, I have told the story in a poem which, despite the title, is not about a locket. It is, as all things are, about God.

 The Locket

It circled her neck on her wedding day

just as it had twenty two years ago

as she lay in her basket, crying low,

loved, but abandoned,

left with a locket and a note.

The note the Chinese mother wrote

said this child whose life had just begun
 was second child in a land of one,

one more than she could care for.
  Her daughter was abandoned to chance.

Not by chance, the baby was found

by an older couple--childless, poor
in a one room shack lacking even door,
but with love enough to give her up

to begin a new life in America.  

In America, she was home at last.

 And she loved her family, outdoor fun,
her Lord, her life and, in time, my son.
 One final time, their daughter was given

into the keeping of another.

The circle completed when she took his name,

Lamb--just like the lamb engraved

on the back of the locket she had saved,

left long ago by the hand of her mother--

by destiny, not by chance.

        For Emily       8/12/14