Curious and Curiouser

When I was going through the doll furniture and Barbie shoes I came across this little brass case. It is about the size of a bullet as you can see from the pen in the picture. Inside the little case is a little figurine of St Joseph carrying the baby Jesus. (Or maybe St. Christopher, but it just seems like Joseph to me.) Looking it up on-line it seems to be a Joseph figurine that was carried with the Bible by soldiers in the Civil War. It didn't mention which brand of Christian would have carried such things.

Things like that seem naturally Catholic to me. We are all about the medals and rosaries and such, are we not? The problem is that the Civil War soldiers in my family were not Catholic they were Dutch Reformed or Congregationalists or go to revival camp meeting abolitionists. But it seems likely that this little thing came to be with the stuff in Mom's basement via my grandpa who went up from Oklahoma to a seminary in Missouri to become a minister. He dropped out of that pretty quickly, but I can imagine his dad giving him that little thing that he had carried in the Civil War to take with him on his travels. My great grandpa was in the Union Army for Sherman's march to the sea when he was still a teenager. I wonder if he carried Joseph and the baby Jesus with him?

Still, it is a mystery. I asked Mom and she never remembers seeing it before. I know it didn't used to be with the doll stuff. Somehow this little Joseph came through time and space to me. Since I don't believe in coincidence, I wonder. I wonder at the lesson, at the message that I should hear from this.