"ummmmm" and "um"

It was late in my Navy career and, as best I can recall, I was home on leave or had been recently discharged from the service. At the invitation of my parents I went across the street from our home to attend the Sunday morning service at the church where I had learned and even served during my adolescent years. It was good to be back and to enjoy the hymn-singing and fellowship with some old friends, just like the "old days" before World War II. But this Sunday service was different. There was special music -- a nice-looking teenager playing a hymn on a marimba, surely the first time I had ever witnessed such an event! She was none other than Mary Kathryne ("Katie") Jackson who was a friend of my younger sisters Joan and Jean. I had met her briefly months before on a short leave and thought she was a good girl to hang out with my kid sisters. But this occasion was markedly different, or I guess I was! She was wearing a nice black dress and really making heavenly music! To myself I could only observe: "ummmmmm!" Nothing happened after the meeting, but some time later (as I recorded in an earlier blog, I think...) I was bored at home on a Sunday evening and asked my Mother if she knew any Christian girl I might take to church, she quickly recommended that I call Katie Jackson and ask her. Well, I did, and she agreed, believe it or not, and since our little home church did not have an evening service that Sunday, I took Katie some 15 miles down to the Waterman Baptist Church at Lodi, IN, where they were holding an evangelistic service, which gave me a little discomfort, praise the Lord! But I was still going"ummmmm"
in my heart to be in her presence ... and still am! You know the rest of the story...like this past December 18 marked 62 years of marriage. Well, I was reading in my old German Bible to start the new year and discovered that, when God was to create a helpmate for Adam in Genesis 2:18, she was to be "um" him for life. The word literally means she was to be "around" him continually as a help "meet" or suitable for him. So, I really think that, when God presented Eve to him
in that first wedding ceremony, he was thinking "um!" and "ummmmmm!"...and for 900 years or so thereafter! That said, we do wish all you lovers, young and old, a HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! Surely, "Many waters cannot quench love..." - Song of Solomon. 8:7.