What is on your wrist, where it comes from, and what to say when someone asks.
Sooner or later someone will look at your wrist and ask what the symbol means. You can answer in one breath.
It is a heart inside a crown of thorns. It reminds me that He saved me first.Fifteen seconds
The rest of these pages is the long answer. It follows the watch itself: the dial, twelve o'clock, the clasp, the caseback.
The soldiers wanted a joke. A king needs a crown, so they twisted one out of thorns, pressed it on His head and bowed.
And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews!Matthew 27:29
They meant it as an insult. It became the one crown in history that people still kneel to.
Other kings wore gold to show what they had. This one wore thorns to show what He was willing to give.
That is why the crown on your dial is twisted like rope and raised from the surface. It is sculpted. When you turn your wrist the light moves across every strand.
Inside the crown there is a heart. Look where it is. It is surrounded.
It stands for a life that was given. Nobody took it from Him.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.John 15:13
The thorns closed around that love, and the love stayed. So the symbol says two things at once: what it cost, and who it was for.
It was for you.
The right answer to that is gratitude. It was never meant to leave a man with guilt.
At twelve, where other watches put a marker, yours has a dove.
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him.Matthew 3:16
The dove is the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit does not come empty-handed. Paul wrote down nine gifts for the church in Corinth, and he said something most men never notice: every believer is given at least one.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.1 Corinthians 12:7
Here are the nine. Open each one. One of them may already be yours.
The list is from 1 Corinthians 12:8–10. Churches read it in different ways, especially tongues and healing. The list itself is Scripture.
Nobody earns these. They are given, “dividing to every man severally as he will.” And none of them is for the man who has it. Each one is for the people around him.
Then there is the fruit. The gifts are what the Spirit does through a man. The fruit is what the Spirit makes of him, the part his wife and children see on an ordinary Tuesday.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.Galatians 5:22–23
A gift can be offered and left on the table. Men who have walked this road say the same four things.
Turn your wrist over. Many watches carry a crown on the clasp. Yours carries a cross.
A crown on a clasp says the man wearing it is king. A cross says who the King is.
Open the clasp and you find two words that only you will read.
GOD'S TIME
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.Ecclesiastes 3:1
You close those words over your wrist every morning. That is the whole ritual.
The back of the watch rests on your skin. Nobody else sees it.
HE SAVED YOU FIRST
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.Romans 5:8
First means before you were ready, and before you had put anything in order. Everything a man does after that is a reply.
In 1239 Louis IX, king of France, brought to Paris a relic venerated as the Crown of Thorns. Tradition records that he carried it into the city barefoot, without his royal robes.
Then he built the Sainte-Chapelle to keep it: a chapel whose walls are almost entirely stained glass.
In April 2019, when Notre-Dame burned, the relic was carried out of the fire. It was returned to the cathedral in December 2024.
For eight hundred years men have treated a ring of thorns as worth more than gold.
Whether it is the crown itself, no one can prove.
A watch cannot pray for you, and it will not make you a better man.
You chose to be reminded. Many times a day your eyes go to your wrist. Now there is something there to meet them.
A symbol deserves a watch that lasts as long as it does. This is what yours is made of.