A frail lady pulled out a mason jar from her shelf. Her eyes teared up as she remembered its story…
Young Emma woke up one morning. She looked out her window to see her world on fire. Violent reds and oranges screamed through her window. She gasped and ran for the door. Young Emma was five years old but fiercely independent. She threw on her house slippers and bolted out the front door. She had to experience what she say without the safety of shelter.
When she got outside she absorbed all the details. As the smoke billowed from her breath she took the sight in. The icicles clinging to the roofs and trees. The soft blanket of snow covering the ground. And the sunrise reflecting through the ice – creating a world ablaze in beauty without a single, harmful flame.
With her eyes scanning the horizon and her mouth wide open, she had an idea. She ran inside and grabbed a mason jar. She had to capture this moment. She wanted to remember it for the rest of her life.
Emma was a practical young girl and knew it wouldn’t be as simple as opening and closing the jar. There was no way to capture such a beautiful moment through traditional means. But she was determined. She knew she’d experience this day for the rest of her life. There had to be a way to capture this moment.
Seventy years later I sat beside this once young girl. She held up the mason jar with such reverence. It was unremarkable in every way. Except when she told me her story…that’s when I began to see that morning inside the jar. The jar seemed to glow with colors I’d never imagined. The details became clear. I felt the shiver in my skin but the warmth in my heart. How could such a simple thing as a mason jar hold something so incredible – so supernatural?
As I reflect on it now I realize the mason jar didn’t capture that morning. Emma did. She just put that morning inside the jar when she wanted to share it with others. And her story was the vehicle.