Unbound

I read this delightful post by Noel Piper and for some reason, I ended up with foreign objects in both eyes. Seriously, it’s a touching post that reminded me of my own great-grand mothers.

Back in the day, my Dad tells me, she was a sight to behold. His grandmother was a red-haired matriarch who brow beat all of her children into church and then brow beat some of them out. She was bright, witty, and had a vicious temper. In the words of Michelene og Flynn (The Quite Man) “Oy, that red head is no lie.” And it wasn’t either.

But I never knew her that way. I remember the frail, bed headed, vacuous older version who called me by my dad’s name—most of the time. I remember resenting the fact that I had to take time out of my summer vacation to go visit every Sunday. The nursing home was not nice for 7, 8, 9, 10 year olds. The fried chicken at the diner up the road made up for it somewhat but the place was smelly and scary and I didn’t like it. (They are greatly improved these days—the homes, not the fried chicken.) But great-grandma’s daughter, nearly as hard-headed, would not shirk a visit for any reason.

It’s nice to know, now after so many years, that our salvation isn’t based upon something we’ve done or even our own awareness of it. That we can know the Lord—as my own great grandmother surely did—and die with our brains as empty as the day we were born and still step into glory that next moment. That is comfort. That is assurance.

Praise the Lord for a God like that. Praise the Lord.

I’m still mulling over some of the things I was thinking about yesterday. But those things and this post fit in so well with our study in Mark 10 that I’m going to write that later and probably put it up tomorrow.