Jeremiah 2:32 (NIV)
Does a young woman forget her jewelry,
a bride her
wedding ornaments?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
days without
number.
In Tennessee Williams' short story "Something by
Tolstoi," centers on Jacob Brodzky, a shy Russian Jew who inherits a bookstore.
Jacob is married to Lila, his childhood sweetheart. He enjoys being a
bookseller, but she wants more adventure-and she leaves Jacob for the theater.
Brodzky is devastated. At their parting, he reaches into his pocket and hands
her the key to the front door of the bookstore. "You had better keep
this," he told her, "because you will want it someday. Your love is
not so much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back
sometime, and I will be waiting." She kisses him and left.
To escape the pain, Brodzky withdrew deep into his
bookstore and immersed himself in his books while he waited for his love to
return. Nearly 15 years after they parted, at Christmastime, she returns. But
when Brodzky rose from the reading desk that had been his place of escape for
all that time, he did not take the love of his life for more than an ordinary
customer. "Do you want a book?" he asked. That he didn't recognize
her startled her. But she regains her composure and replied, "I want a
book, but I've forgotten the name of it." Then she told him a story of
childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly married couple who lived in an
apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young, ambitious wife who left to
seek a career, who enjoyed great success but could never relinquish the key her
husband gave her when they parted. She told him the story she thought would
bring him to himself. But his face showed no recognition.
Gradually she realized that he had lost touch with his
heart's desire, that he no longer knew the purpose of his waiting and grieving,
that now all he remembered was the waiting and grieving itself. "You
remember it; you must remember it-the story of Lila and Jacob?" After a
long, bewildered pause, he said, "There is something familiar about the
story, I think I have read it somewhere. It comes to me that it is something by
Tolstoi." Dropping the key, she fled the shop. And Brodzky returned to his
desk, to his reading, unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone.
Does your love still burn for the Lord?
Dear Lord, Help us not ever forget You. Help us keep Your
love alive and active in our live. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
