One day at school, they gave us old cigar boxes to decorate as presents for our mothers. I remember cutting out old greeting cards and gluing them onto the outside of my box with generous blobs of Elmer’s Glue. After more coats of glue and shellac, the gaudy cigar ads were completely covered by shiny, overlapping pink roses and glistening purple pansies, by golden curlicues and drawings of wide-eyed kittens. The trouble was that the box was forever sticky around the edges from too much shellac, and the carelessly découpéd corners stuck out as testimonies to my childish enthusiasm. Inside, the box still smelled like cigars.
I sometimes feel as if I have cut words out of the Bible to shellac over the cardboard cigar box of my faith. The scissors of my brain cut wide swaths around “Salvation,” “Righteousness,” “Law,” “Grace,” “Life.” I paste them all over my faith in random abandon, creating a child-like gift for God, a gift that remains unkempt around the edges, with rough corners that are ready to peel away at any moment. What do the words really mean when they are taken out of their context in Scripture and glued onto my faith? When curious fingers try to pull back the edges to peek underneath, do they find treasure or just ads from days gone by? Is the box empty inside, carrying only a sweet, musty odor? If I just put the cut-out words inside the box, then no one will see them. If they are peeled away, then they will be lost. I want to find a glue that holds without stickiness, a form that fits smoothly to the box and transforms it completely. Is that glue my own integrity?
