Good Morning Friends and Digital Neighbors!! Happy Saturday! But wait, there’s even more O Antiphon & Messianic goodness for your morning musing. Key of David! Keys had such symbolic value in life; I’m not sure keys are as significant today as they were in the past. Our keys have morphed into passwords, keypads, and other code numbers that serve the same purpose. As today’s O Antiphon indicates, keys possess the power to open and lock, to grant or deny access and entrance. Being given the keys to whatever was a sign of trust and honor. The symbolism of a key was something of a status symbol. Being given a key to your home and finally achieving the keys to the car were significant moments in life. Keys indicated the maturity to handle the responsibility that would accompany them. If you can’t handle the responsibilities, you don’t get to keep the keys.

Society will forbid you access to driving if you have violated the commonly understood rules of the road. It will go further: if you fail to be a cooperative neighbor, you may face a day in court and a trip to prison. That all depends on equal application of the law—and that seems to be something of an anomaly these days. Areas of unequal application are becoming exodus zones (Europe) for people seeking areas that still understand something of the nature of social contracts between citizens and local government. The granting of access into whatever is a matter of trust. If you are waiting to grant trust to someone perfect, you will live and die a solitary life in the waiting. Even the most trustworthy of souls will have small infractions against trust; the question remains: what are major infractions, violations, and actions that cannot be reconciled?

Take today’s namesake—David. Adultery and murder are deal-breakers for most of us in dealing with another person. They are reprehensible acts and violations against a person. Why would David be seen as a good king of Israel? In the end, the God of Israel puts a lot more stock in honesty and not hiding behind excuses. Love him or hate him, David gets a pardon because he was honest when called on the carpet—something of a rarity these days in the world of leadership. Blaming others for your choices doesn’t sit well with the Burning Bush; ask the apple pickers how well it worked when they lied and played the blame game. Paradise lost.

Well, enough for a Saturday—I hope whatever keys you have been entrusted with in life you can handle with maturity, responsibility, and honesty. Given that you won’t handle such sacred gifts perfectly, be humble in your failures and avoid excuses and justifications; they never play as well as you think they will. To those individuals you have entrusted with keys, I pray they are worthy of your trust.