— Unknown

— Carol Simmons, director of the Daly City (Calif.) Library

Bookmarks provide the most utilitarian (and often underappreciated) of tasks — simultaneously marking where a reader left off in a book and where he or she is to pick it up again.

Silently, but consistently, they log the progress made through the pages of fiction or nonfiction works, through volumes crammed together on a crowded bookshelf, and across the span of a reader’s lifetime.

They take many forms. Bookmarks can be as simple as a scrap of paper torn from a legal pad, a business card, paper clip or a crisp dollar bill. Or they can be collectors items, mementos purchased at souvenir shops or ornate pieces of art rivaling the splendor of even the most beautiful book cover.

Every devoted book reader — save for barbarians who prefer to dog- ear the pages in their books or torture their bindings by placing the open pages facedown when they are done reading — values the practical, yet essential work of a bookmark.

However, for all of that usefulness, once a bookmark slips out from the pages it is supposed to mark, it loses all value. But the bookmark Gerald Lowe found several years ago in a tiny antique and used bookstore gained far greater value when it fell out of the book he was browsing. It changed everything, adding a new, exciting and dangerous chapter to the spiritual warfare that had raged for years between Jesus Christ’s church and all those who wanted it destroyed.

It contained the meanings of the symbols Lowe had been seeing on people’s hands, and it didn’t take a lot of reading between the lines to understand the purpose behind it all. Short of the Bible being mass published by Gutenberg, had there been a more exciting development for Christians in the past several hundred years?

From the moment he started writing down the meanings of each symbol, Lowe firmly believed  that God had a plan for Christians to finally and fully harness the spiritual gifts He placed within them and tap into the power of the Holy Spirit in a new way.

“How was your flight, Mr. Lowe?”

Snapping out of his thoughts, Lowe regarded his two traveling companions — Gary Moreland and his wife, Elizabeth. “It went fine, thank you,” he replied to Gary from the back seat of a black Toyota Camry.

Gary sat in the front passenger seat scanning their surroundings, while Elizabeth drove aggressively, taking back roads and backtracking often to make sure they were not being followed. Day was breaking in Duluth, but the rain he was greeted with at the airport had not ceased to downpour. “But please call me Gerald.”

“Sure … uh, Gerald. It is an honor to have you visiting us,” Gary said while keeping his eyes fixed on their surroundings.

“Thank you. I wish I could tell you this was purely a social visit or an impromptu inspection, but we have some very difficult issues at hand,” Lowe said, looking down at his hands. One was clutching a Bible, while the other held fast to a dusty, crumbling book entitled “The Middle Ages” — his only remaining physical connection to the magical day when the “Soul Scout” bookmark fell out of a book and became the world’s Rosetta stone for the strange language written on the hands of billions of people.

He couldn’t remember the date, but he vividly recalled the glorious early spring morning when temperatures were hovering in the 70s and bright sunlight blasted the city streets, businesses and houses of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Lowe was on another of his so-called “Crusades” — a series of countless expeditions made around the world. The goal was much more than sightseeing. Lowe wanted to find the answer to a question that had plagued him for years: What was the meaning of the hand symbols? And why couldn’t he see them on his own hands?

His previous trips had failed so miserably that he didn’t really expect to find anything substantial inside the nondescript bookstore in East Grand Rapids. If he found a couple of interesting books to add to his already overflowing collection in Minnesota, he would be happy. So, after several minutes of scanning the bookshelves, Lowe carried a stack of books to a small reading table and began inspecting them.

“The Middle Ages” didn’t look like much. Its cover was a fading black and the title was written in equally fading red. No author was mentioned, which Lowe found odd. It appeared very old, so after dusting it off as best he could he opened it to the first few pages.

Crack!

The binding probably hadn’t budged for decades — or longer — so Lowe made care to leaf through the book very slowly and not create further damage. But that’s when he noticed what appeared to be a bookmark poking out from the book. He opened to the page where it rested, and it gently fell out and softly floated onto his lap.

At first glance it looked like any other typical bookmark. His own collection was well past 150 now. But then he saw that each of the symbols he had seen on the hands of countless people was noted on the bookmark, followed by a short description. The several variations of crosses that adorned nearly every left hand in the world were listed on one side, while the myriad “right-handed” symbols that looked like ancient Egyptian word pictures were displayed on the other side.

“Ah ha!!” Lowe exclaimed, momentarily shattering the bookstore’s historic calm.

“Is there something wrong?” an employee asked him.

“Oh, nothing … sorry. It’s just that I found exactly what I’ve been looking for,” Lowe said, embarrassed a bit by his outburst. He quickly placed his newly found treasure back where he found it — it looked like an ordinary paper bookmark, but it felt like silk. — and went to pay for the book it came with.

Lowe could hardly wait to return to his hotel room and further study the bookmark, but he stopped just a few paces from the store’s door to reflect and more properly react.

“Thank You, Jesus,” Lowe said while dropping to his knees, oblivious to the stares and strange looks he received from several people walking nearby. “Thank You for answering my prayers. Thank You for this wonderful bookmark! If I am to be some small part of Your Kingdom business, please reveal to me what it is.”

Moments later he was back in his hotel room, rapidly copying what was written on the bookmark into the research notebook he began filling with clues years ago. Now he was scribbling in the answers — in between follow-up prayers of thanks and praise — and the purpose of the symbols was beginning to take shape.

“Lord, are You showing me the spiritual temperature and gifts of each person who has these symbols written on their hands?” Lowe asked, but then he stopped for a moment to consider the enormity of what he just said.

He had stumbled upon the key to one of the greatest ministry tools in the history of Christianity. And something told him that he was going to be put in charge of a very large and brand-new mission field.