GPBC Blog

Allow me if you will, on this Mother’s Day weekend, to pay homage to my own mother. She is 92 years old and I’m sure as I can be that she won’t make it to 93. She is in the last days of her life— on this earth, that is. Dad finished his life here and has been with our Lord for fifteen years now. For fifteen years Mom has wanted to join him in the presence of Jesus. For fifteen years every flu, cold, sniffle, or sneeze made her hope that it would turn out to be her doorway to heaven, and that once through that doorway, she would be with the two of them. Although her mental faculties are now so diminished that she cannot remember or speak that desire, it remains a longing without words in the deepest places of her heart. 

Mom was gifted in hospitality and in service. Even into her eighties, Mom was serving “those elderly ladies” by driving them to church every Sunday. She was very task-oriented but she could make people feel welcome and accepted and honored in her home. Every guest speaker in our little country church had an automatic invitation to our house for Sunday dinner. Around our table and in our living room Luis Palau, Moishe Rosen and his band of Jews for Jesus, and a variety of preachers from across the Northwest were made to feel like they belonged in our family. That’s got to be part of the reason that three of her four children have been in vocational ministry most of their adult lives and the fourth has always been actively engaged in the life of her church. 

Mom made us memorize Scripture when we were young but I can’t recall that she ever just read the Bible to us, that was Dad’s job. But Dad’s transparent devotion to Jesus and to the Bible and Mom’s model of servanthood implanted a ministry mindset in each of us. And in large part because of their life in Jesus together, not only are her children and their spouses Jesus-followers, but most of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are as well. That’s nearly 70 people who now belong to Jesus because he converted Mom and Dad and they then lived their life together for him. Now that’s a heritage! And that’s a legacy to which we can all aspire. 

Thank you, Mom.