Peacock or Java Blue?

“Oh, you are Java Blue! I am Peacock but I think I like Puccini, too!” was a recent conversation I over-heard while browsing a local gift shop. This is the language of “Vera Bradley” and in my small town, many people of the female gender are very bi-lingual! While having lunch with a precious college student, I noticed her car keys attached to a “pattern” I recognized. When I asked her about it she said, “I realized I would never be popular until I had a piece of Vera Bradley!” I nodded knowingly, for I also had a Vera story.


For those of you who do not know, Vera Bradley is a collection of quilted purses created in various shades and patterns and sold only in specialty gift shops. I became acquainted with them when we moved to this college town where many girls had quilted purse hanging to their hips! Wanting to be trendy but completely unaware of what “Vera” was, I found a quilted purse in the dollar store and began to “wear” it, on my hip, thinking I would then be in the “know”… but NO!!! Every eye that glared upon my “wanna-be” purse seemed to scream to the world: fraud!

Frauds are every where! “Take-off’s” abound both in the retail market and in our lives and in thinking about this particular trend, I found a life-lesson! Bear with this blonde’s musings!


There is only one Vera Bradley Company where authentic Vera purses are produced. In order to assure the real deal, one must really know the product. Only then can an imitation be recognized. Since Christianity in it truest sense is the model for faith we see many imitating many of its tenets. We hear celebrities define themselves as “spiritual”or thanking “god”. When I was a child, that meant being a Christian, but in today’s vernacular it can mean anything from worshiping your inner-self to a blade of grass! We must not take familiar terms for granted. Many are trendy by-words! They sound good…might even look good but in reality they are cheap imitations of the real thing and have no value other than noise...kind of like my dollar store purse! Authentic faith always points to a giving up of yourself and turning to One who can be trusted. It is not found any and everywhere but only at the foot of the cross.


We who are believers in Jesus Christ know the truth…but can we recognize a fraud? Some Vera imitations are so good it is difficult to tell--- unless you know the catalog! The only way to recognize God’s truth is to know the Word of God…the Bible. A lack of biblical knowledge places us in a dangerous place of accepting imposters who are, by the way, everywhere!! What they say sounds good, but believers are called upon to know if it is the Word of God! If not we should scream “fraud” with every sentence. Paul warned Timothy of this very thing. “In the last days some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits.” (I Tim. 4:1) Paul then urged Timothy to hold on to the truth of God! Do you know scriptural truth or are you being fooled by excellent sounding words? Who guides you? Is it God’s Word or Oprah?


Finally, a real Vera Bradley purse is expensive and I am amazed at how many I see worn around town. The cost of being able to live eternally was paid for by the death of God’s Son… free to us! Are we as determined to “wear Him” to show the world as we are a silly purse? If we aren’t, how will they be able to distinguish authentic Christianity or a wanna-be? I want to be authentic. I want to world to know I have a Real Savior and He wants to be their Savior, too! How about you?