Sending Our Words Ahead
Media is too much with me. I can spend so much time among bitmapped and inked characters, half aware of audiobook scripts, that prepared verbal input loses some of its impact. I can domesticate it. I can unleash my quotes to nip at other people's heels like Chihuahua watchdogs. I need to get out more.
So I did, and the same words were waiting for me. Chiseled in stone, on a gravestone, they etch their way deeper into me. Secondhand through Billy Graham's book Nearing Home, his relation that his wife saw a highway sign with the words, "End of Construction. Thank you for your patience," seems safe enough. His report that she wanted this on her tombstone made some impact, but I moved on to conquer other input. There are many books, many quotable nuggets, between me and an epitaph.
I saw the phrase she repurposed on the actual gravestone beneath which Ruth Bell Graham's earthly remains rested, and something came alive within me. She was human like the rest of us. She had more competition for her time as she sat in construction delays than we do. But she prepared her heart. At least some of that heart went into a traffic delay, a delay of her day, determined to see the Lord's purposes of eternal construction in temporal aggravations. At least some of her heart was partitioned by discipline for gratitude to be expressed to other people. She saw and expressed the parable beneath, around, and through. Because she promoted daily doings to this place, they outlasted the traffic jam that prompted the revelation. They outlasted her. They will outlast her great grandchildren, should the Lord tarry.
She's not the first. About to rehearse events that must have been far more harrowing to live through than a traffic jam, the author of Psalm 78:2 pledges to his audience, "I will speak to you in parable. I will teach you lessons from Israel's past." (New Living Translation) In real-time events, boring, grating, grieving, wearying stuff, we get to sift for the parable which connects them to the everlasting story and glory.
She's not the last. I'll confess that some of the words I have thought and spoken in my own wait time, if they were engraved, would need to be accompanied by an eraser of grace in order to keep me from slinking away from Matthew 12:36's assurance that we will be accountable for every idle word. Overwhelmingly, though, today is about celebrating the positive corollary of that verse. Because my sister in Christ Bell Graham her thoughts and her words what direction to go in an unexpected delay, they still testify after she had gone to her reward. Because she did that in a moment, I have company and continuity in my tendency to hunt for life's lessons in seemingly banal occurrences. If my tears are treasured by the Lord (Psalm 56:8), how much more are the excited, grateful words He gives me indelible so that we can enjoy them as I enjoy Him forever?
So I did, and the same words were waiting for me. Chiseled in stone, on a gravestone, they etch their way deeper into me. Secondhand through Billy Graham's book Nearing Home, his relation that his wife saw a highway sign with the words, "End of Construction. Thank you for your patience," seems safe enough. His report that she wanted this on her tombstone made some impact, but I moved on to conquer other input. There are many books, many quotable nuggets, between me and an epitaph.
I saw the phrase she repurposed on the actual gravestone beneath which Ruth Bell Graham's earthly remains rested, and something came alive within me. She was human like the rest of us. She had more competition for her time as she sat in construction delays than we do. But she prepared her heart. At least some of that heart went into a traffic delay, a delay of her day, determined to see the Lord's purposes of eternal construction in temporal aggravations. At least some of her heart was partitioned by discipline for gratitude to be expressed to other people. She saw and expressed the parable beneath, around, and through. Because she promoted daily doings to this place, they outlasted the traffic jam that prompted the revelation. They outlasted her. They will outlast her great grandchildren, should the Lord tarry.
She's not the first. About to rehearse events that must have been far more harrowing to live through than a traffic jam, the author of Psalm 78:2 pledges to his audience, "I will speak to you in parable. I will teach you lessons from Israel's past." (New Living Translation) In real-time events, boring, grating, grieving, wearying stuff, we get to sift for the parable which connects them to the everlasting story and glory.
She's not the last. I'll confess that some of the words I have thought and spoken in my own wait time, if they were engraved, would need to be accompanied by an eraser of grace in order to keep me from slinking away from Matthew 12:36's assurance that we will be accountable for every idle word. Overwhelmingly, though, today is about celebrating the positive corollary of that verse. Because my sister in Christ Bell Graham her thoughts and her words what direction to go in an unexpected delay, they still testify after she had gone to her reward. Because she did that in a moment, I have company and continuity in my tendency to hunt for life's lessons in seemingly banal occurrences. If my tears are treasured by the Lord (Psalm 56:8), how much more are the excited, grateful words He gives me indelible so that we can enjoy them as I enjoy Him forever?
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