O words with heavenly comfort fraught! Whatever I do, where’er I be, Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me. Sometimes ‘mid scenes of deepest gloom, Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom, By waters calm, o’er troubled sea, -Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me. Lord, I would clasp Thy hand in mine, Nor ever murmur nor repine; Content, whatever lot I see, Since ’tis my God that leadeth me. And when my task on earth Is done, When, by Thy grace, the victory won, E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee, Since God thro’ Jordan leadeth me.
‘For we are but of yesterday…’
In Job 8:9, the Bible reminds us, “For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:”
I celebrated my 50th birthday this year in September. I can’t help but reflect on the years I’ve been allotted in this life. I’m thankful for all of it; the joys, sorrows, and struggles. I’m thankful for those that have loved me the most and taught me the best of their yesterdays and wished for me more than they’d ever known.
Looking back to my yesterday’s I refect about some incredible ladies that have been a great influence to me. The love they’ve shown me. Their beauty goes deeper than skin. Their strength beyond fleshly understanding. Their faith in God a resounding echo across time, …still.
I still have my maternal grandmother’s “Singer” sewing machine. I can still hear the hum and feel the wind of her pedaling as she quilted and sewed to make things for her family and friends. I can still hear my paternal grandmother call my name “Jan-i-fer,” and I still giggle and smile on the inside thinking of that appalachian accent and some of the phrases I’ve learned and handed down to my children. I hope one day they look back with a little happiness on their “yesterdays” and find I’ve left at least a few “yesterdays” of mine to them.
My mother, she’s the strongest person I know. She has taught me that you can make it through anything, not by relying on self, but by relying on her Savior Jesus Christ. He has helped her through great tragedies. She may not know that she is a true hero to me but she is.
My grandmothers, the love they had for their children and family speaks volumes. I remember Sunday dinners at their houses; they lived across the old dirt road from each other, with the table filled with food. Everytime I hear a sermon on the “Marriage Supper,” of The Lamb, all I can imagine is my grandmaw’s supper table. When supper was over, all the cousins sneaking away from the supper table to find a grapevine swing that swung out over a mountain. What fun we had, O the memories of a “yesterday.”
“It reaches across time.”
Hebrews 11:4
“…he being dead yet speaketh.”
My grandfather, not biological, but by heart. He loved me like his own daughter/granddaughter and it says so on his death certificate, but he’s gone now. He loved all of us. He loved my Ma’maw past her death and then still in his alzheimers stage of mind. He still saw her, everywhere, talked to her like she was still there even after she’d long gone. He loved her beyond the grave beyond her yesterday. Now that’s love.
They don’t make them like that anymore, do they? You know? What the Bible calls “Love.” It’s called “Charity.” He was charity in overalls.
Job7:7 “O remember that my life is wind:”
It’s funny how we can not grasp the depths of someone’s influence until their gone.
Meditating on the verses in Job, “For we are but of yesterday…,” so much of who we are and who we become is a reflection of those who had much influence in our lives and our yesterdays. I’m so thankful for their yesterday so that mine (yesterdays) might reach across time to those I love.
O remember that my life is wind and 50 years seems like a gust of wind gone by. Where did my yesterdays go?
I pray my yesterdays are like …
Job 19:24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
Psalm 43:4 O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
Almost home but not Heaven.
A Sparrow's Whisper 