A KEEP SAKE

God miraculously fed His people in the wilderness for 40 years with manna. It was a miraculous provision of the Lord and He didn't want them to forget it, so He commanded that they keep three quarts of it as a reminder.

Exodus 16:31-34, "The house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. And Moses said, this is the thing which the Lord commands, Fill an omer (three quarts) of it to be kept for your generations; that they may see the bread wherewith I have fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt......lay it up before the Lord, to be kept for your generations."

Keep sakes are important to God, so they should be important to us. Of course, we can't hold onto everything, but it is good to keep special things for remembrance. Photo albums are wonderful keepsakes aren't they? It is hard to keep up-to-date with them, but if you can, it is a wonderful memory for the children.

I have kept ours in chronological order from the birth of our oldest child up until our current grandchild. The children have, and still do, spend more time pouring over the old photo albums than any other thing. It is the memory of their lives and they are constantly referring to them.

Do you keep a little snip of hair of each child? Their hair changes color so much over the years that it is a wonderful memory for them to know their color when they were little. One mother audio-taped each of her children laughing and crying when they were babies. She also taped them singing and talking to each other at different stages of their lives. Now they are older, they love to listen to how they sounded when they were little.

When my seventh grandchild was born, my son-in-law purchased a trunk for a keep-sake for his daughter, that he will give to her when she is 21 years. So far he has put in it the newspaper of the day she was born, a Nashville magazine of current events the week she was born, uncirculated coins of the year she was born, her first dress, her first shoes which they have bronzed and a snip of her first hair cut!

When my husband turned 50 years, I wrote to all our family and friends all over the world and asked them to write down an incident in his life that they had shared with him, or what he meant them and send it to me. I then compiled it into a special book and presented it to him on his birthday. It is a memory of his first fifty years!