March 24, 2008
How He Loves
I'm still trying to articulate my feelings about Easter this year; about the incredible service at church yesterday, which closed out with the song "How He Loves." I just scribbled in my notebook, "Oh how He loves us...!" It's incomprehensible.
Verses from Isaiah 53 keep tripping over themselves in my head and it's so perfectly perfect, this prophecy that describes my Savior, my God. He was a man of sorrows. There was no physical beauty or majesty that drew us to Him. He was despised by men and we esteemed him not. He was PIERCED for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon HIM and by his wounds we are HEALED.
Healed. We are healed. The brokenness has been healed. Oh how He loves us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWnvBM40xxw
Posted by hannah at 11:07 PM
March 02, 2008
100
I've been tossing around ideas in my head for weeks about what I could write today, this day that my maternal grandmother celebrates her 100th birthday.
For a while it appeared this day might not come at all. She fell a few weeks before Thanksgiving and fractured her pelvis. She was forced by circumstance and willful daughters to spend a few weeks in a rehabilitation hospital and she hated every minute of it. At the time it was simply my fervent prayer that she be allowed to die at home, but because her strength is seemingly unstoppable, she has been back home for three months now and seems to be doing better each day.
Her doctor has two patients older than she and the doctor says my grandmother and those two other centurions are three of her healthiest patients. No disease, no paralysis. Simply age taking it's toll after 100 years of living.
My mom tucked this picture into my Christmas stocking and when I pulled it out, my eyes immediately filled with tears. Being born to country folk in the early 20th century, not many photos exist of my grandmother as a child. In fact, this is the youngest one I've ever seen. Her life was never easy, not even when this picture was taken.
Her father - the great love of her life, I believe - passed away when she was only 9 and she has spent the past 91 years mourning him.
She told me a few months ago that people called him "Red Morrow," because of his bright red hair. Maybe that's why she is so taken with Michael (who is her 30th great-grandchild).
I love this woman in a way I find difficult to explain. Though I am one of literally dozens and dozens of children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren/great-great-grandchildren, I sometimes feel like there something special between us. An unseen thread that strings our hearts together over generations and miles.
My lungs breathe because of her. My heart beats because of her. I am alive because of her. Her strength lives in me, though I am not even an iota as strong as she. She left sleeping babies in a one-room house at 4 a.m. every morning as she crept out to milk cows. Her shoulders bore the weight of water she lugged in from a creek. She said "I do" to a man when she was only still a girl. She has buried her parents. Her in laws. Her siblings, including a brother who died as a young, young man. There were whispers of suicide, but to this day she maintains that he didn't, he wouldn't. She has buried every single one of her friends. She buried her husband, placing shaky hands on his casket as she bent down to kiss it, moments before it was put into the ground. She has buried three of her children - three lives that she birthed into this world in a little house, miles from a hospital or a doctor.
This morning in church, as we sang "Jesus Paid it All," I started to cry thinking about her life and her legacy. Her legacy of faith saved my soul. Because she taught my mother the Truth, my mother taught me. But more than that, the ransom that Christ paid for me, he paid for her. And because of his glorious sacrifice, not only will I live with Him forever, but so will she.
O' praise the one who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead
She will never die. Nor will I. Nor will anyone who is justified through faith.
Romans 5:1-2
"Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory."
Posted by hannah at 08:00 PM
