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Good morning.  I was kneeling on the floor of the bedroom with my friend Robert - decluttering.  We were checking through at least three, if not four generations’ worth of accumulated memories.  There were old theatre and concert programmes, a collection of fossils, a painting with an inscription on the back:  ‘painted it as a gift’ for one of my grandmother's 21st birthdays.  There were light bulbs, paper clips and gift tags long separated from their presents and with expressions of so much love.  There were empty boxes and bits of wood that might one day have come in handy.  Champagne corks.  Not everything was precious but anything might have been.  Other items seemed to breathe history:  old christening gowns for tiny babies, once pristine, now stained with flecks of rust left behind from ancient plumbing, prayer books and family bibles.  Robert and I went through as much as we could, sorting kitchenware that could be usefully passed on and collecting together things to keep.  He had a little pile in front of him: a toy train, a pair of opera glasses, a snuff box.  He got up to stretch his legs and I casually looked to see what he’d found.  There was an ordinary wine bottle cork.  It was clearly old. I picked at a split in the cork.  It slid open and inside, no bigger than a thumb nail was a tiny white china doll. Her face was painted.  She was lying on a bed of pink wool.  'I thought it was just an old cork,' said Robert.  We probably missed things we could have sold, but somehow this tiny doll in her rough cork cradle felt symbolic:  that often the most precious things are tiny and their discovery has a different kind of value.

Lord, help us to know what is important in our lives, to keep the material world in perspective and to treasure what is of true value.  Amen.