I have thirty keys. They hang from two different key rings in bunches which are not even slightly organised, except I know that one contains all the keys for school and the other has all the home keys. I differentiate the two bunches by the key fobs that also hang down, advertising somebody's business and also by the fact that my car key is on one of the two groups along with a Liverpool FC badge and a small LED flashlight that the manager of a Chinese restaurant gave me one night, again advertising his premises. Over the past couple of years several different memory sticks have been added and at one stage I even had a pair of nail clippers dangling from a ring. I rarely carry the school keys during the day but the rest almost constantly hang from my pocket, creating a comforting jingling sound as I walk. I had a quick look at both piles recently and discovered that on a normal sort of day I will probably use eight keys in total and if pushed, might stretch that to possibly ten. A quick calculation among the mathematicians of a primary four class could even work out that on a normal day therefore, I have in my possession twenty two keys that never do the job for which they are intended. To complicate the matter even further, I no longer know for what purpose some of the keys are used but I do know that several are now redundant, only fitting old locks that have long since been discarded. And that's not all. Amongst my school keys, I have discovered keys that only fit doors at home, except that those doors are no longer in the house any more ever since we carried out a small extension. I really must get around to organising them better, instead of having to carry this heavy weight of metal all the time. And just to make it even more complicated, there are now several doors and locks that I come across for which I don't have a key. Mum used to have a glass jam jar of keys that she had collected over a period of time. When we lost a key to a shed outside or one of the rooms inside, down would come the jar and we would fumble through the different metal shapes, looking for the one we needed, but strangely, we never found a key that would open any door or lock. Anyway she kept them - just in case!A few years back, I had one of those gadgets attached to my keys, so that when you whistled, it made a high pitched response and it was easy to locate their whereabouts. And while it kept mice out of the house, unfortunately it attracted all the dogs in the country! No, I'm only joking, but it was such an annoying sound, because when it detected any loudish sound, it used to start to beep, not very understanding of it, if you happen to be in church when the soloist reached for a note she couldn't quite find. So I removed it from my key ring. Then one evening I lost the whole bunch about an hour before we were due to go out to a function. Yes I had a spare car key and some house keys, but the thought that maybe someone might find the missing ones was slightly worrying and so began the great key hunt. Tow of our friends arrived and were treated to an exhibition in reminiscing the recent past and searching every crevice, shelf and cupboard that the house could yield. As they drank coffee and enjoyed the spectacle, adding to my frustration with 'concerned comments and suggestions,' the keys stayed hidden. Soon our time to leave had passed and an hour later we were still tracing our movements with no return. As darkness approached, I took a walk in our back garden and in the beam of a torch, something glistened and I suddenly remembered where I had been earlier that evening. The panic was over and the blame I had attached to other female members of the household, of which there is only one, was proven to be well wide of the mark and subsequently withdrawn with an apology.
Keys are there for one purpose, to open locks, but keys do give authority to the one who is in possession of them. Jesus once said to Peter, 'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.' Most commentators agree that the keys of the kingdom in this case were meant to convey the fact that Peter, through his preaching of the truth of salvation, could open the way for many to find the kingdom, by God's grace. This doesn't make Peter as somebody more special than us, for when we believe on Jesus as Saviour, He gives us the keys to the kingdom in that He expects us, through our profession of faith in Him and through our witness, to open up the way for others to find Him too. But for too many, the keys remain redundant and sometimes, unfortunately, there are those Christians who can't even remember what their real purpose in life is. And you see,if you don't use a key, some doors are never opened. But one other thing strikes me too. How great was my panic when I lost those keys that I tried to remember when and where I had gone wrong and even tried to blame others. And when we stand before God some day, we may find ourselves thinking of those opportunities we had and even blaming others for our failures, but the fault will only lie with one person. Thankfully, Jesus told the lost parables to remind us that He hasn't stopped seeking all who are still lost and his beam is still shining. After all, He is the key to life.
