You see, this necklace is very special. It is made of plastic shopping bags, a lollipop stick and the silver in the center of the cross is from a gum wrapper. I wish I knew how it was made from those things but I've never seen the craftsman make them All I know is that he does and that it takes him a lot of time to create each one of them. One could say that he has the time on his hands to make them, because, you see, this craftsman is incarcerated in one of Louisiana's prisons.
One of our Kairos brothers brought bag full of these necklaces to a Kairos team unity meeting. He told us that each donation for them would go to Kairos Prison Ministry because the young man, the craftsman who had made them was a Kairos graduate and know the value of the ministry. The young man's father was also a Kairos volunteer on the outside and brings quart size zip lock bag fulls of these necklaces from his son after each visit. Donations to Kairos are his only request.
Each person who tool one last winter donated $5 each. I bought about 3 of them. Each person who bought them, we have found, has had a story about their necklace after leaving the room. Last week three of us were together and each one of us, in acquiring another necklace, had something that had happened to us involving our necklaces. Each of us met people who needed encouragement and prayer and each of us had given our necklaces away--sometimes to perfect strangers.
My most memorable necklace story was from going to the hospital before work for an early morning blood test. There I met three people in Waiting Room A. There was a friendly lady who arrived about the same time I did who didn't appear to meet a stranger. She started talking to me and pulled the shy man with one leg into the conversation. The third lady came into Waiting Room A and sat beside me. She also felt encouraged to talk and share by the first lady who was called to the back by a nurse. But she began to talk to me.
She told me how her sister had just passed and the funeral was that very day. But she'd volunteered to allow everyone else to go to the services while she waited for her niece to come out of surgery. Then she would take her niece home to take care of her.
Just then the vampire nurse called me to the back to extract a blood sample. When I came back through Waiting Room A the lady was still there. She told me that her sister had died from the complications of lupus and her niece's surgery was also due to lupus. I assured her that from what I'd read and from people I know with the disease that lupus was controllable under doctor's care and of course, staying in prayer. She seemed happy and comforted to discover she was talking to another Christian. She told me her niece's name after I told her of the wonderful prayer warriors I knew in my church, prison ministry and on line.
As if on cue, a young man came down the hall pushing a gurney with a tiny young lady on it. "There she is! There's my niece!" said the woman. She'd told me how cute and tiny her niece was. She was in her early twenties but looked like she was in middle school.
"Hi, Niece!" I chirped."Well, you are a cutie, just as your aunt described you!"
She blushed as her aunt scampered to her side and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I will have you both in my prayers," I added as I excused myself to go to work.
As I got down the hall, my hand touched my necklace and I had to turn back. i took off the necklace and I approached the gurney. When I told them what it was made of, Niece said, Wow! That's amazing!"
Then I told them who made it and why. I told her that I wanted her to have it to remind her that someone was praying for her. All I asked was that she remember that and do it for someone else.
When a few of us had our prayer vigil for Brother Hermann Schluter while he was in the hospital, I believe one of the reasons God had him awake and cheerful was so Richard could give him his necklace. Richard said the same thing in the hospital room: "There's something about them that makes you have to give them away.
Later I saw Brother Checo give one away to one of the young ladies who works with changing the laws for incarcerated youth. He said it was his third necklace also!
There's something about that necklace that one wants to have it and one has to give it away. Something joyful. It's like the gospel: It's not to be kept to oneself but spread around as any other good deed. I love my necklace, but I don't intend to keep this one for very long either. It's a beautiful necklace indeed!
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