“The Weight of Things”

A guest blog by Monroe Johnson

Tom stood in his father’s study, holding a worn wooden spoon. The pancake batter stains had darkened the wood over decades of Sunday mornings. He remembered the rhythmic scraping sound as his father stirred, telling stories about his childhood breakfasts, each memory layered like the rings of an old tree.

The spoon felt heavier now than it should have. It was like his father’s watch, neatly placed on the desk, its brass face scratched from years of construction work. A box of old nails caught his eye—”$0.89″ written in his father’s precise handwriting. Each object seemed to pull him deeper into the reality of their relationship, anchoring moments he hadn’t known he needed to hold onto.

Tom had always known he loved his father, but now, handling these everyday items, that love became tangible. It wasn’t that the objects themselves made him love his father more. Rather, they provided concrete points of connection, like anchors holding abstract feelings in place. Each item was a thread in a web of shared moments, making what had always existed more visible but was sometimes hard to grasp.

The pipe on the windowsill still smelled faintly of cherry tobacco. Tom remembered summer evenings watching his father pack it carefully, their conversations about life flowing as easily as the smoke. These weren’t just memories – they were touchstones that gave his love substance and shape in space and time.

What had been a floating, undefined feeling now had weight and dimension. Through these ordinary objects, Tom could trace the outline of their relationship, feel its texture, understand its depth in ways that thoughts alone never quite captured.

He sat in his father’s chair, the wooden spoon still in his hand. The late afternoon light filtered through the window, catching dust motes that danced in the air. He chuckled, remembering how his father would always say “Time to make the magic happen!” before starting the pancakes, as if stirring batter with a wooden spoon was some kind of sacred ritual. Maybe it was. His dad had a way of making ordinary moments feel special, not through grand gestures but through small constants – the Sunday pancakes, the careful pipe-packing, the meticulous labeling of even a simple box of nails.

These ordinary moments, lived so fully and freely in their own time, had somehow carried forward. Each item held not just memory but possibility, as if his father’s complete presence in every simple moment had created its own momentum, reaching naturally into the future. The spoon wasn’t just a reminder of Sunday pancakes past; it carried the echo of his father’s laughter forward, a thread of joy that would weave into new stories, new mornings.

The love between father and son wasn’t preserved – it was alive, growing from the soil of those fully-lived moments. His father hadn’t tried to create legacy; he had simply lived each moment with such authenticity that the future grew naturally from it, like oak trees from acorns.

Tom set the spoon down gently on the desk, next to the watch that still kept faithful time. His father’s absence was still a raw wound, but these ordinary treasures somehow made it bearable, even beautiful – turning grief into a kind of promise, memories unfolding into hope.

Luke 24:30-31: 30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight

An afternoon of scriptural discourse – words upon words, prophecies analyzed, meanings debated. Their hearts burned within them, but their eyes remained dim. Until that simple, everyday act: the breaking of bread.

Perhaps it was the way His thumb pressed into the crust, that familiar indent they’d seen a thousand times. Or how He lifted the loaf slightly, pausing as He always did to inhale its warmth – a habit so characteristic they’d once teased Him about it. Maybe it was the precise angle of His wrists as He tore the bread apart, a gesture as unique as a fingerprint.

In that moment, theology became touchable. Like Tom finding his father in a worn wooden spoon, they found their Lord not in the grand interpretations of scripture they’d discussed along the road, but in this intimate choreography of hands and bread. The abstract Truth they’d debated became flesh and bone before them, recognized not through intellectual assent but through the tangible grammar of shared meals and familiar gestures.

What all their scholarly discourse couldn’t accomplish, this simple act achieved – like how a father’s old pipe can say more about love than a thousand words. The gap between symbol and reality, between scriptural knowledge and living presence, closed in the breaking of bread. Their eyes were opened not by more explanation, but by witnessing this physical signature of the One they knew so well.

Before them stood not a theological concept, but their teacher, known in the flesh through the material language of bread and familiar gesture – just as Tom found his father’s love made tangible in the objects that carried the imprint of his presence.