In my quest to own all things Gamecube, the other day I picked up a rather rare piece of swag.

In case you don't know it, swag means "stuff we all get" but that is far from the truth in many cases. There are usually very limited numbers of the item, after all at a trade show for instance where a lot of swag is given out you will probably only see a couple hundred sales folks. Some items I will never get were only made in the double digit numbers and there are so few left (since most of the time no one thinks to save these things!) I will never see more than a picture of whatever it was.

Swag is also given out by sending in box tops (do kids do this for ANYTHING anymore?) cutting a coupon out of the Sunday comics or even, as in this instance, for buying a game. Back in the day when you pre-ordered a particular Gamecube game, you got something to show for it right on the spot, a Kobe Bryant bobble head.

Well >I< didn't get it. Someone else did. And now years later they were selling it to a collector like me which was very nice. Except when they mailed it to me, here is how it came.

Packaged in a "nutty bar" box, which has the thickness - barely - of a cereal box. The box big enough for two bobble heads, so the guy who mailed it put in a very small handful of wrapping paper. Klunk it was all over the place in there. Taped together in every possible way, but crushed to the point where if it hadn't been wrapped in packing tape the box would have disintegrated to dust. As it was, the box was crushed apparently over and over to the point where it was more like the consistency of a bag than a box, the fibers were so broken down. I can't express how badly this thing was beaten up.

Yet inside there was that fragile bobble head, without a crack or a scratch on it! It was such a "miracle" (a topic for another bulletin another day) I got to thinking right off how I might compare this to spiritual things, and it was easy.

I mean, our physical bodies are just like the box. A container for the soul. While we start out in most cases sturdy and strong, time and the bumps/bruises of life wear on us. Often we are stomped on, crushed, tossed, and in general mistreated. Rarely are we left sitting on a shelf left alone, because life is rather harsh in one way or another. Sometimes inside of us our spirits are broken and that is a very sad thing. But the amazing part is it is possible to make it through the rough handling of life and keep our valuable souls in one piece!

Really though that's OK. After all, I wasn't buying the box, I wanted what was inside. The outside container, having finished its tough job of keeping the insides intact, gets rewarded by going right into the trash. When we are tempted to focus more on our bodies than our souls, we should try to remember as much as we pamper and fawn over it, to dust (bin) it shall return.

Randy