We visited the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. when I was about thirteen. I remember very little about the collections we saw. The train room frightened me a little. The three-story pendulum clock was fascinating.
But the two things that I remember the most were the Hope Diamond and the Bradford Toy House.
I wanted to take these two things back with me to our Iowa home. I wanted to own the Hope Diamond. I wanted to play with the little people in the Bradford Toy House.
I think I fell in love with the Hope Diamond and the Bradford Toy House for the same reasons I'm fascinated by the lives of the saints.
Their lives are shining examples of what it means to be holy and righteous. Their witness shines brighter than the Hope Diamond.
And yet, they lived lives of no great notoriety. To be great, they had to become small.
They had to wash floors, give what they had to the poor, take care of the dying even if it meant they would catch the illness and die as well. They had to live in obscurity, like Mary and Joseph who shared their lives and home with the Lord of all creation. But nobody gave them a second glance. They weren't on the nightly news. Nobody interviewed them. They didn't live in a palace. They rode on a donkey, not in a BMW. They worked for a living. Hardly the life one would expect for the greatest Mother and Father of all time.
They had to shine like diamonds on the inside, but live like the littlest of God's creatures on the outside.
It is a paradox. Like putting the Hope Diamond in one hand a miniature Bradford figure in the other. They don't go together at all . . . and somehow they fit together perfectly.
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