You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2008.
Grandma’s Apron
I don’t think our kids know for sure what an important role grandma’s apron played in history. It was like a badge of honor to wear it. It showed how capable the girl or woman wearing it was to handle whatever challenges came along.
The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath while she tended to keeping her home. It was a part of her everyday wear; a practice she had started when she was a child.
Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood-fired cook stove. Still, she smiled when she thought of how much better that was than the open fireplace her grandmother had to cook in!
That apron also served as a handy potholder for retrieving hot casseroles from the oven, or those heavy iron skillets from the stove top. It was essential for gripping those pesky caps screwed on the glass jars of food she canned and stored earlier.
It carried in all sorts of vegetables she pulled from the garden. After the corn was shucked, the peas shelled, or the beans snapped, it was handy for carrying out the waste.
On the return trip it carried in wood chips and kindling for the kitchen stove. Sometimes it carried in a piece or two of firewood just to keep the fire going until the men got back up to the house.
From the chicken coop, it carried in that morning’s eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven of the cook stove.
In the spring, the apron was used to bring in sweet berries, and in the fall, delicious fruit from the trees out in the yard. On cool mornings grandma wrapped it around her arms to still the chill while she got the wood fire going.
Toward evening, when dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron real high, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
When unexpected company drove up the dirt road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds! And, as the dust settled, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids as they snuggled in close.
But perhaps the most wonderful role it played was drying children’s tears, or draping over their shoulders for comfort, cleaning out dirty ears, or applying just a little spit to clean a dirt streaked cheek.
It was certainly a simpler time, when grandma’s “old-time apron” was arguably the most versatile and comforting device in memory. It once symbolized everything good about the safety zone of the American home; love, devotion and skill at everything from cooking to medicine and home management to child psychology.
No, our kids can’t know what a wonderful thing grandma’s apron was, but they’ll go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on it!
(I don’t think I ever heard of anyone catching anything bad from grandma’s apron . . . . )
You may have forgotten about the Alabama Chief Justice who recently refused to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall. Judge Moore was sued by the ACLU for displaying the Ten Commandments in his courtroom foyer. He has been stripped of his judgeship and now they are trying to strip his right to practice law in Alabama! He is still standing tall, and has written an insightful poem depicting the moral decay of America. The judge’s poem sums up the situation quite well.
America the beautiful,
Or so you used to be.
Land of the Pilgrims’ pride;
I’m glad they’ll never see.
Babies piled in dumpsters,
Abortion on demand,
Oh, sweet land of liberty;
Your house is on the sand.
Our children wander aimlessly
Poisoned by cocaine
Choosing to indulge their lusts,
When God has said abstain
From sea to shining sea,
Our Nation turns away
From the teaching of God’s love
And a need to always pray
We’ve kept God in our
Temples, how callous we have grown.
When earth is but His footstool,
And Heaven is His throne.
We’ve voted in a government
that’s rotting at the core,
Appointing Godless Judges;
Who throw reason out the door,
Too soft to place a killer
In a well deserved tomb,
But brave enough to kill a baby
Before he leaves the womb.
You think that God’s not
Angry, that our land’s a moral slum?
How much longer will He wait
Before His judgment comes?
How are we to face our God,
From Whom we cannot hide?
What then is left for us to do,
But stem this evil tide?
If we who are His children,
Will humbly turn and pray;
Seek His holy face
And mend our evil way:
Then God will hear from Heaven;
And forgive us of our sins,
He’ll heal our sickly land
And those who live within.
But, America the Beautiful,
If you don’t – then you will see,
A sad but Holy God
Withdraw His hand from Thee.
~~Judge Roy Moore~~
That states the sad decay of America quite well. Lift up Judge Moore to be victorious in his battle for the right to honor God and the Ten Commandments, and for America to wake up and realize that our country is on a path to self destruction.
IN GOD WE TRUST!
PRAISE GOD! I give thanks today on so many levels for SO many blessings our family has received! God’s shower of blessings for Lea and myself during and following her illness have just been absolutely humbling. Even though Lea’s medical expenses left us financially devastated His provisioning for us has been constant and steady. Along the way we have found a much better relationship with Him, with each other, and with our service in a local church body.
I am greatly relieved that the Indiana house Dottie & Dave purchased to provide for our needs has indeed been sold. The house was certainly a perfect blessing for us, and its provision was one of the most generous acts I have ever heard of. I know the Lord has arranged for their compensation, and Lea and I feel an undying gratitude, and love them all the more. The house again became a solution when my mother suddenly needed help with housing.
Just as that occurred, the Lord opened a door for Lea and me to relocate to Texas for the next phase of her recovery. We were led to a fine doctor who accepted the special challenges of Lea’s medical needs, we were provisioned a lovely rental home in a delightful setting in close proximity to my younger son’s family, and I was able to continue the part time consulting work that helps with expenses. Lea has found a renewed sense of purpose in caring for our new grandson, and her mental progress has been amazing since we relocated
She now has accepted the fact that it is unlikely that she will ever have her abdominal ventral hernia surgically closed, and that she will have to wear an elastic binder that reaches from her hips to her shoulder blades 24 X 7. The joy of caring for the grandson, and seeing God’s wonders reflected in his development, has been the best medicine for her and has lifted her from the troublesome place her mind resided prior to our move. Again, the Lord provisioned for our needs according to His plan!
When Lea’s illness devastated our financial reserves, we sorrowfully abandoned the lifestyle we had enjoyed, and just got down to the basics of survival. Back then Lea still had an active fistula draining pancreatic fluid onto her new skin graft over her bowels, which had been left exposed by her many surgeries. Her medical needs were intense.
Her physical weakness caused her to be confined to a wheelchair or walker, her mental acuity was very poor due to the addictive narcotics she was taking to control her constant pain, and her emotional state was tremulous at best. Providing a continual flow of positive experiences, and protecting her from negative ones, was a constant requirement, since it could take her days to recover from mental anguish.
Over time, as she continued to heal, she was able to reduce the amount of narcotics she needed to offset the pain and was able to get back to meal preparation, which is one of her favorite activities. She improved physically, too, and eventually was able to progress from using a walker to a cane, which affords better mobility. Even though she subsequently had knee joint replacement surgery, the implant was not entirely successful, and she still has to use a cane to maintain her balance. Perhaps some day we will have that surgically corrected, but she isn’t ready to consider that yet.
We are becoming active in our local church as her health permits, and really enjoy going to adult bible study on Wednesday nights. It is a delightful gathering of like-minded Christians with a prepared meal and study of the scripture led by the pastor, who has a charming demeanor and comprehensive knowledge of the scriptures. We were led to his church by our new neighbors.
We have had the privilege of getting to know our grandson’s maternal grandparents better, and delight in being able to spend time with them. They have vastly different backgrounds than our own, but we share the love for our family and a love of the Lord that has made our move here much easier. We look forward to growing closer as we all help our grandson grow in the Lord.
Looking back over the past three years, I am so glad God intervened in our lives! I had mistakenly planned for security, but God planned for spiritual growth. I had tried to build security for Lea’s retirement, expecting that I would be the first to go to my heavenly reward. He took security away to remind us that our purpose here is to prepare for eternal life. Lea and I have much less now, but have gained so much more. We no longer have financial security, and I continue to struggle with that emotionally, but we have the peace and comfort of knowing that He is moving mightily in our lives, and that His purpose for us will play out in His way in His own time.
One of my favorite hymns, Amazing Grace was made even more special for me a few years ago when I heard my daughter-in-law perform it, a cappella, during a very touching ceremony to recognize fallen Civil War era soldiers. I will never forget how beautiful her voice sounded as it echoed off the tall buildings downtown as a horse-drawn wagon passed carrying a flag draped casket.
I received a link to a video of a performance of Amazing Grace by Wintley Phipps, in one of the most profound performances I have heard. It made chills run up my back, and brought tears to my eyes, as I felt the Spirit and visualized the setting this hymn came from. I think you will enjoy it, too.
Wintley Phipps is an ordained Seventh Day Aventist minister, world-renowned vocal artist, and president of the US Dream Academy. He also founded Songs of Freedom Publishing Company and Coral Records Recording Company. Mr. Phipps has been the featured speaker and performer at many notable occasions around the world. Additional videos can be found just by searching on his name. He currently serves as Pastor of a church in Palm Bay, Florida.
If you aren’t familiar with the slave-ship-captain-turned-evangelist John Henry Newton, there is a lot of interesting information on him on Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. He was the author of many hymns, including Amazing Grace. He was born in London, the son of a shipmaster in the Mediterranean service. At the age of 11 he went to sea with his father and sailed with him on a total of six voyages.
In 1743, he was pressed into naval service, and became a midshipman. After attempting to desert, Newton was put in irons, court martialed, and received a flogging of eight dozen lashes. He went on to become enslaved himself before being freed by a friend of his father’s.
Sailing back to England in 1748 aboard the slave-ship Greyhound on the Atlantic, the ship encountered a severe storm and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and prayed to God as the ship filled with water. It was this experience which he later marked as the beginnings of his conversion to evangelical Christianity. He later said that his true conversion did not happen until some time later: “I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterwards.”
Still, he didn’t renounce the slave trade until later in his life when he wrote a tract decrying it in aid of abolitionist sympathies. He only gave up seafaring and his slave-trading activities in 1754, after a serious illness.
Much later he published his thoughts about the African slave trade, which is quoted here:
“With our ships, the great object is, to be full. When the ship is there, it is thought desirable she should take as many as possible. The cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons, or little more, is calculated to purchase from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty slaves. Their lodging-rooms below the deck, which are three (for the men, the boys, and the women), besides a place for the sick, are sometimes more than five feet high, and sometimes less; and this height is divided towards the middle, for the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other, like books upon a shelf. I have known them so close that the shelf would not, easily, contain one more. And I have known a white man sent down, among the men, to lay them in these rows to the greatest advantage, so that as little space as possible might be lost.
“Let it be observed, that the poor creatures, thus cramped for want of room, are likewise in irons, for the most part both hands and feet, and two together, which makes it difficult for them to turn or move, to attempt either to rise or to lie down, without hurting themselves, or each other. Nor is the motion of the ship, especially her heeling, or stoop on one side, when under sail, to be omitted; for this, as they lie athwart, or cross the ship, adds to the uncomfortableness of their lodging, especially to those who lie on the leeward or leaning side of the vessel.”
John Newton went on to study theology, and went on to pastor churches and was also a prolific hymnist. So popular was his preaching that the church he pastored in Olney for 16 years had a gallery added to accommodate the large numbers who flocked to hear him. In 1767 William Cowper, the poet, moved to Olney, worshipped at Newton’s church, and collaborated with Newton on producing a volume of hymns, called Olney Hymns. This work had a great influence on English hymnology. The volume included Newton’s well -known hymns “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken”, “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!”, “Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare”, “Approach, My Soul, the Mercy-seat”, and “Amazing Grace”.
What a blessing it is, to listen to this performance, and experience anew the thrill of God’s love!
