“Only one life, twill soon be past…” Yeah, I know, that’s the first line of an old poem about the importance of storing up treasure in a place where it will endure forever. But it also can successfully stand alone succinctly to sum up what, in the Good Book, is described as “a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”
Eighty-eight years ago last September 3rd, my mother made her first appearance on this earth. She was born the seventh child of a family that would expand to include thirteen; but before she was two years old, with only one younger sibling, her family literally gave her away to relatives. Her birth mother had come down with pneumonia, and all of the children save the nursing babe were farmed out to kin, but the others all returned home when she came home from the hospital. My mother never knew, much less understood, why she was never reclaimed. After being shuffled from one set of kinfolk to another, at age 2+ she was taken by a 40 year-old farm couple from 60 miles away that were unrelated to the family and that had no children of their own. It wasn’t until she was nineteen that she was adopted by the people I knew as my maternal grandma and grandpa.
I don’t know much about my mother’s childhood. I do know that she was exceptionally bright, and that she bypassed at least two grades, being graduated from high school at the tender age of 15. As a teenager she loved to dance and enjoyed attending the movies. After graduation from high school she enrolled in a junior college and earned a Medical Secretarial diploma. This was followed with employment by two doctors and a dentist for almost a year. She then went on to earn her Bachelor of Science in nursing.
She first met my father when he was 7 and she was 8. From then on he was on her mind. As she puts it, “I liked him in his knickers.” Ultimately, though her adopted father opposed it, at least initially, she and my father were wed. Dad was in the Navy at the time, and they were stationed in Atlantic City, New Jersey for the duration of WWII.
My brother John was born about a year and a half later, I followed him by 14 months, and our sister Mary appeared 16 months after that. Mom might as well have had triplets. Three children within 30 months of each other was enough to keep her more than busy. Steve and Esther came 6 and 8 years later, respectively. David was born in her 44th year, and in between these babies there were several that never saw the light of day. She said she’d always wanted six.
Mom was a devoted wife and mother. We all have fond memories of coming home from school to an inhabited house, of our favorite meals and lunches, of a home that was immaculately kept, and of a mother whom we often heard in private prayer . The heart of her husband trusted safely in her, and her children have all ultimately arisen and blessed her. She most certainly was a Proverbs 31 lady!
Her life passed by quickly. She and dad served seven churches spanning 42 years of ministry. All were either church plants or congregations that had experienced difficult times. And, as the years rolled by, mom encountered her own times of suffering. Unthinking and sometimes unkind “church folks” wounded her with words. Her reaction, as witnessed by entries in her diaries, was to forgive and to ask God to change her to be more like Jesus. The “strawberry episode” offers insight.
A lady in one church was particularly spiteful toward mom, and she wrestled with what to do. Dad and she had planted a strawberry bed in the yard behind the parsonage, and it was yielding delicious and plentiful fruit. Mom loved her strawberries and carefully tended the plants. One morning as she was picking the fruit she heard Jesus say, “Give her your strawberries.” A brief argument with the Lord ensued. Mom didn’t want to share. But the Savior persisted, and in the end she did as He’d directed. As a result, it seems, the whole demeanor of the offender changed and the relationship was better from then on.
The most difficult trials and the most severe pain for Mom resulted from the loss of her oldest and youngest sons to death. David went first, at 15 the victim of a drunk driver on New Year’s Eve in ‘81. John succumbed to complications following a third heart surgery in ‘86. Her diary entries from then on made multiple references to the loss, and their subsequent birthday anniversaries were always remarked upon. I don’t think that pain ever went away. She just learned to live with it.
And then, after fifty-eight and a half years of marriage, her beloved Arthur went Home to heaven. By then the disease that would eventually claim her own life was progressing, though we were not skilled to understand what was happening. It ultimately robbed her of the ability to recognize us, and to do all the things that had been second nature to her for the major portion of her life.
But even at this stage of life when she who had been so adept at so many things now had to rely on others to do the simplest tasks for her, her gracious God used her to accomplish his will in others. One grandchild is especially grateful for her unflagging love for and confidence in her Heavenly Daddy. She was unable to communicate much of anything to him that made sense that day, but her clearly stated conviction that God’s Word is the truth is what brought that young man to his knees before the Savior – in her presence.
The mist that was our mother’s life is vanishing away even as I write. She is, quite literally, awaiting death in the memory care unit of a new nursing home quite near to the home of one of my sisters. She has completed the circle of life that sufferers from Alzheimer’s experience, journeying back to her childhood and a time in her reality when we, her children do not exist. She told my brother and me, along with my daughter, in a lucid moment about three months ago, “Life is so short. Enjoy every day.” Her life will, in the words of that old poem, “soon be past;” but she spent it laying up treasure where both it and she will endure forever.

From the land of the reformers it’s Melanie, the delightful Swiss miss that served us our breakfast in downtown Zurich. It’s Donald from the hotel snack bar, the guy that called our room to let me know he was holding for me the camera I’d left hanging on the back of my chair there.
Both John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli made their homes in Switzerland. Geneva was Calvin’s town, and Zurich was Zwingli’s. Today, Sunday, August 16, we three couples took the tram down town. In addition to taking a boat taxi for a hot ride on the lake, we visited three churches.
Yes, we “went to church,” as we say, three times. The first was the Grossmunster Church. It was built as a Romanesque building in 1220, but in the 16th century Zwingli launched the Swiss Reformation from it.
were opened as a refuge for persecuted French Huguenots.
These were just three of the church buildings whose towers (steeples) dominate the cityscape. But for all that, as I wrote in the previous post, this land of the Reformers stands in great spiritual need.
What a contrast to the country we’d been living in for the last week and a half! As the plane circled for landing I glimpsed manicured farms and well ordered towns. And closer inspection yesterday supported those aerial views.
country, a castle that sits in the town of Rapperswil. We did travel up the mountainside to the Heidi House, and even saw the goats, or, at least some goats. Then we journeyed to the tiny kingdom of Liechtenstein, just 9½ miles by about 15. The capital city of Vaduz was absorbed with the yearly celebration of the duke’s father’s birthday. The old man had died, but before he did he made a law that his August 15th birthday be celebrated every year with parties by everyone.
It was a feast for the eyes, and soon I quit taking photos because of the overload on the senses. I captured enough that you will be able to see what we experienced.
Yesterday Jeff Petersen and George Cheek arrived at our retreat site. After lunch our fearless leader took all of us, indigenous leadership as well, down the road about ½ mile to a place called Home of Hope. That’s where the above phrase came to mind.
When a fly invades my home in the States, I hunt it down and kill it – a single fly! But some of the folks in Autoraj’s video had really suffered at the “hands” of flies, with their wounds becoming breeding grounds with the resulting maggots. And this man tenderly picks these undesirable people from the streets, literally picks the maggots from their bodies, and administers love and care to bring them to health.

His posture in prayer should be copied by the kids in my own country, in my opinion. Perhaps even by the adults. In fact, when we were having our “burden-bearing” prayer time with the men, when they each sat in the chair in the center of the group and shared their concerns, when we all laid hands on them and prayed, he was right in there, placing his small appendage on the head of the subject of our intercessions.
