Jesus said, “If ye love Me….”

We lived in a white, four-room, cotton mill house, and we slept on two double beds in the same bedroom, throughout the year. The company bedroom was occasionally used but not often, and used by me, only during the one week in the summertime when my cousin Doris came on vacation, a time when Dood and I giggled together past our bedtime, and finally fell asleep in the gleaming wooden bed with the pretty, flower-stenciled headboard.

The rest of the year, I slept with Mama, and Daddy slept on the double bed beside us. We sat together in the kitchen after supper generally, in the wintertime, and on the front porch or in the back yard during the warmest months, and only seldom in the living room. Mama and Daddy talked, or just rested quietly after the dishes were washed and put away, or Mama ironed and I finished my homework. Sometimes, I played a few games of jack rocks by myself. ( Being an only child taught me to enjoy both solitude and company; I discovered that loneliness and solitude are not the same thing.) Our evenings were quiet, uneventful, and peaceful, in a natural kind of way. With no television to keep us up after supper, we usually went to bed right after dark. Parents and child, we were a contented and grateful, together and happy, small family of three.

Our quiet, simple home rarely had a harsh word spoken in it. No profanity was voiced; no taking of the Lord’s Name in vain was permitted; or committed. No slapping about the head was allowed, even from me and my playmates in play, or in brief childish squabbles. (My father walked with me to school in Bladenboro on the morning after my first grade teacher slapped me for weeping quietly a part of every day for three weeks. He got off work to walk there and to confront her for exactly that, and to take me out of school for that year.)

The Lord was honored in our home. Prayers were offered by my folks in gratitude and trust to the Lord, for meals, in times of sickness, for protection from the 40’s summer scourges of infantile paralysis, for spiritually lost souls who did not know the Lord, for bereaved neighbors mourning the loss of departed loved ones, and for the mercy of God’s guidance and amazing Love.

Our neighbors’ children were blessed by my mother’s generous handing of her mouth-watering, homemade, mustard biscuits spread with French’s mustard, out our backporch screendoor to the hungry children who came there to ask for them. Mama never sent a child away without one. Or two. And she covered the children with her prayers and love,

Mama and Daddy believed God. Their faith was childlike and simple. They heard and they believed. They loved God. They loved their neighbors. They kept God’s commandments to love God and to love the neighbor. And even to love the enemy. Our home was blessed by God’s “amazing grace.”

After my father’s death before sixty, Mama came to live with Lalon and me and our three children in Cary, and we were a family of six. At the age I am now, Mama joined me in Richmond where I was then teaching Christian theology in seminary at BTSR. It was my priceless blessing to have my mama living with me in her final years. We shared an affectionate witticism I had thought up, and often said to her, whenever we walked, arm-in-arm, into MacDonald’s for upside-down ice cream cones, or into Burger King for whoppers and a Coke.. I would say to her, “Mama, I used to be your little girl; now, you’re my little girl.”. (She weighed just 95 pounds then.) Our glee and giggles unfailingly followed and gave us a lighter step. My shared fun with Mama sparkles in my memory, still.

The Lord called Mama home to be with Him, just a few days after she reached 90, at the end of a long lifetime of faithful discipleship in the midst of both health and hardship. I have missed her greatly. And both of my devoted parents, I miss more each day. Glory to God for their nurture and care, for their lives of trust and witness!

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, is one Lord; And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might ” (Deut. 6:4,5).

Our Lord tells us to love, to bless, to do good to, and to pray for, our neighbors and for, yes, our enemies, even for those who “despitefully use us and persecute us.”.(Matthew 5:43-45a).

I realize that I referenced above the scriptures I quoted last week. I meant to. Let us all strive, diligently, through the Holy Spirit’s ever-available, necessary empowerment, to live in the light of those teachings from God. Mama and Daddy strove to do that. Thank You, Lord, for them, and for the testimony of their faith in You.

Finally, here is this teacher’s assignment for the coming week. Memorize this one verse, just seven words long, and hold it close to your heart, keeping it in your thoughts. Our Lord taught, “If ye love Me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Thanks be to God.