“I have a horrible habit of wanting to keep people,” I confessed to a new friend. “But this time Mom actually said yes, we should keep you… so you should feel special.”

And while he laughed about how awesome it is to get the “mom seal of approval,” he also shared this little gem with me:

“Continue to ask your mom if you can keep people! There’s a lot of people who need to be kept.”

There’s a lot of people who need to be kept.

I think that phrase has echoed in my mind at least twenty times since I read it just last night.

There’s a lot of people who need to be kept.

It reminds me of that story in Genesis where God asks Cain where Abel is, and Cain replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And I think maybe—just maybe—that question wasn’t deserving of such a sarcastic response.

Because maybe Cain was his brother’s keeper.

Maybe we all are.

And maybe that’s why the question has always tumbled from my lips so freely. “Mommy, can we keep him?”

Because it has always been my duty:

To keep you from stumbling.
To keep you out of harm’s way.
To keep you close to my heart.

Because we all need to be kept. Every one of us.

And maybe some of us don’t even know what that means. Because we’ve never been kept before. Maybe you don’t know what it is to be cherished so deeply that someone would have a hard time saying goodbye—letting you go.

I don’t think I need my mom’s permission to ask if I can keep you. To ask if I can be that person who would ascribe worth to you.

I want to keep you, friend. I want to be the one who would hold you close to my heart and never let you go.

Because you’ve always needed to be held this way.

And if I have but one purpose, one calling, one way to summarize the rest of my life, I hope it would be this:

To be a Keeper of the World.

Let’s all be Keepers of the World.