Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Revelation 2:10 (HCSB)
This past week I was late to the office a couple of mornings for various reasons. When I arrived on Tuesday, I jokingly introduced myself to Judy and Loretta, since I had not been there much the two previous mornings. Loretta immediately responded with, “Just a minute, I’ll get your pink slip.”
Most of us have heard the term “pink slip,” and we know that it usually means that if someone has received one, they’ve been fired from their job. I wondered about that, and did a little research. It stems from a practice of putting a pink notice in an employee’s pay envelope to notify them of their termination.
The Oxford English Dictionary said that the term was first mentioned in an article published in a 1904 typographical journal. It suggested that a pink slip was not the actual notice of termination, but was instead a warning given to an employee whose performance was less than stellar; if he accumulated too many “pink slips” he would lose his job.
Funny thing, though. Peter Liebhold is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. He has spent years searching for an example of an actual pink slip, but he hasn’t uncovered one yet. His conclusion was that “it's much more of a metaphor than it is a physical object. I've been unable to find them even in any private collections." The bottom line is that no one really knows where the term originated.
But what if God issued pink slips? He doesn’t, of course, but if He did, I’m afraid I would have been dismissed a long time ago. I would have accumulated quite a pile of them by now! My rating as an “employee” (read, “disciple”) sometimes is not very good. My sin, my hypocrisy, my lying, my lack of commitment, my sporadic Bible reading and puny prayer life—well, you know what I’m talking about because you’re guilty, too—all of it adds up to quite an accumulation of “pink slips.” I’m thankful that He freely pardons and that He does not hold our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19).
Hebrews 10:23 reads, “Let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” In other words, we should do our best to be faithful to Him, because He is faithful to us. This time of year should remind us of that like no other.
–Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com