The Unexpected Blessing

Friday night I got to spend some time with my son, Josh, his wife, and their 3 active children. At some point in the evening, I challenged my son to remember. He usually tells me that he doesn't remember anything about growing up. I always insisted he must remember something. He did remember his favorite hymn as a young boy. My 30 year old son, soon to be father of 4 began to sing "Jesus ,what a friend for sinners. Jesus lover of my soul." I joined him as he sang "Friends may fail me, foes assail me. He my savior makes me whole."

I remember my son's arm raised waiting to request his favorite at a Sunday night worship service. "Hallelujah, what a savior. Hallelujah, what a friend" For grownup Josh these are not just words that happen to go to a catchy tune. They are now a declaration of what he himself believes. Mother and son, two generations together able to declare. "Saving, helping, keeping, loving He is with me to the end." We stopped before the next verse but that verse  fittingly describes us and other generations who will walk the way and those who are now walking with Him in heaven. We may not have remembered those words or we may have wanted to treasure the moment where we were each hitting the right note of this one verse and two verses with no distracting notes seemed like too much to hope for. The second verse is well worth reading.

Jesus, what a strength in weakness
Let me hide myself in Him.
Tempted, tried and sometimes failing,
He, my strength, my victory wins.


P.S. Josh, thank you for a precious moment to remember.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Before Your Eyes and in Front of Your Nose

Recently I read a blog by a man named Jason Helopoulos. He said that many times after church we find ourselves talking to someone who was not on our list. Instead of devoting ourselves to the person in front of us we're looking elsewhere while we are bemoaning missed ministry opportunities on the other side of the room or at the other end of a ringing phone. We often fail to realize that the one in front of our eyes is our ministry opportunity. His blog jogged my memory. One year when we lived in Vermont I did a paper on understanding how God wants us to minister within the church. I called what God would have us do an ifoyn (in front of your nose) ministry. I remembered my friend Mom Walker. She had a son who was college age and he would often invite other students home with him. This ministry came to her. She did not have to agonize about what should she find to do. On Sunday morning as she would greet visitors, she would listen for information that would link this person to so...
Read more

Anticipating a New Arrival, Remembering Old Lessons

I've been a grandmother for a little over 5 years and in April we will be welcoming our fifth grandchild. I wish I had paid a lot more attention to the details of being a mother of small children while I was going through it. I started journals for each of my 4 but I wrote very little. I guess I was too busy living it to write that much. It seems like all  I can remember are inconsequential things like "Very few of your toys made any noise." or embarrassing things like "When you were nursing, you used to always----"  Then I am reminded that because of God's grace there are lessons I remember. Often when a young woman gets married she is told by someone in her world, “ This wedding is all about you.” To be in control , to be able to make as many of her desires happen as possible,  wouldn’t every bride want this? Usually the new couple doesn’t get past the honeymoon before the bride has to drop the “it’s all about me” attitude. If the couple wants the marri...
Read more

A Tale of Two Chairs and a Rug

My mother became a resident of heaven two years ago on March 14. Slowly, initially one by one, pieces of furniture left the family home. I took home a small desk which had been given as a wedding present in the last of the 19th century. Later my brother loaded a piece that had belonged to my grandmother. It was called a pie safe made from a golden colored wood. The front was covered with tin panels punched with a design. The original use was to keep pies safe as they cooled and to keep them protected from impatient family members. For many years I remembered it as the place to find card games. As time went on furniture began to leave at at a more rapid rate. One of the pieces was a recliner that I had asked for. It was a smaller recliner than ours with a greater firmness.  Mom had this recliner for years. For about 2 years of her life she would take naps daily. She would call those naps " toes up", a term used by one of her favorite novelists. Since I have fallen in love wi...
Read more