"Kaboom!"

Springtime is always an exciting time in Indiana.  We have had a nice spring so far...only one bad tornado warning ...no funnels sighted.  So we've been blessed, among other things to celebrate Mary K.'s 84th birthday, on April 22.  She's still my "teen bride" and I love her, appreciate her more each day.  She was privilege to take training at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, at the Child Evangelism Training Institute in Muskegon, MI, but she received her "PhD" from the "Whitfield&Gladys Jackson Practical Bible Training College"!  Her mother and father, by Biblical example and precept rooted and grounded her in the Christian faith and prepared her for a lifetime of faithful service for the Lord Jesus Christ.  While I was studying at Moody we chose II Corinthians 6:1 as a life verse:  "We then as workers together..." and that summarizes our 65 years of ministry...and we pray it will until the Lord calls us Home in death or the Rapture!  She grew up on the Jackson Farm (early near Newport, IN, and later just west of Wallace, IN) as a "neglected" child having no TV, only parents who loved and guided her, and chores, including care of animals, to build her body and character!  Taking a stand for Christ in her teens, she maintained to her folks that Wallace .had no datable guys. Well, after the evening that I first took her to church and as she was about to go to sleep in her upstairs bedroom her dad climbed up the nearby windmill and whispered loudly in her open window, "there aren't any boys to date in Wallace!"  Her parents were humble and hard-working (Dad served as deacon at Yeddo Baptist Church), but above all they were faithful prayer-warriors.  We always said that God gave Mom first priority to her prayers...it was "dangerous" to share a burden with her!  We'll never forget her funeral...she and Dad were the last to be allowed interment in the government-protected family cemetery near Newport, and at the graveside service (on Mother's Day in 1980) Pastor had just closed with a benediction, when a loud clap of thunder sounded "kaboom!"...just as if the Lord was saying, "AMEN!" to a life well-lived.  On this approaching Mother's Day, I thank God for my life-long partner Mary K., for her mother, for my mother (Mamaw Grimes who went to be with the Lord in 1987), and for our great daughters, grand-daughters and grand-daughters-in-law and for faithful mothers everywhere.  We pray for you, that God will bless and use you in these confusing times to validate the Biblical institution of motherhood.  Maybe your exit from this old world will not be announced with a literal "kaboom!," but be applauded by Heaven, too, as you remember that "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised!" -- Proverbs 31:1-31(30).