Guess who's coming to dinner

My mother didn't get to finish her tablecloth. When we moved my parents from their farm in Kansas to Palo Alto and later to Bakersfield, she began to crochet it.   ... star by star.  Her hands were work-worn from years of raising chickens, planting and hoeing gardens, picking the fruits and vegetables then canning and freezing them, beginning her washday Mondays at 4 A.M.  by heating water to the boiling point on the old wood stove in the wash house, and finally bringing from the clotheslines sheets, pillow cases, towels,  heavy overalls and all the washables that were required for running a one hundred-sixty acre farm and farmhouse. Her house was always immaculate, despite her daily battle with wind-blown dust.  My daughter Dee still talks about her grandmother's neatly folded, ironed, snow-white stacked linens.  Mine aren't.

My brothers were gone from our home by the time I was  eight years old.  My grandmother became bedridden with diabetes. Her leg was amputated and gangrene set in.  There were no hospice nurses then; my mother and dad cared for her while keeping the farm producing food for our table, grain for the feeding of the livestock and poultry and hopefully enough of a surplus to sell in order to  pay off the mortgage that was forced upon them during the depression.  I was resentful toward my grandmother. ... repulsed by the odors and the ugliness of dying.  After the light that emulated from her quiet life was extinguished when I was fourteen,  I became so ashamed of my attitude.  I truly believe it was that sin that brought me to repentance when first I heard the Gospel at nineteen. .

Years later I knew that Ted and I somehow had to release my parents from that Kansas farm that was sapping the life out of them. At our insistence they sold the farm and moved to Palo Alto/San Jose where we were in our first post-seminary pastorate with Ray and Elaine Stedman.  Elaine Stedman is now 92,  living in Medford, Oregon;  Ray has long been with Jesus.  I also stay connected with 91-year-old Harriet and 92-year-old Betty; . ...all three from that first ministry with Ray where we received our practical training for ministry.  We learned that a biblical church is based upon discipleship, rather than a pulpit star's sermons. Ray's excellent messages on the website "RayStedman.org" reach many more people than they ever did when he was still here on earth.

It was Ray and my Ted who led my 75-year-old dad to Jesus when he lay in a hospital bed in Palo Alto. The beautiful saints in Peninsula Bible Church gathered my parents into their Christ-arms and loved them both to Himself.  We moved them to Bakersfield later where the saints in Fruitvale Community Church displayed to them the love of Christ.  When we moved to Houston, my brother in Kansas provided a home for them.  One of the greatest agonies of my life was that I could not care for my parents until they died.  I cried often, sometimes screaming with pain into my bathroom towel so the neighbors wouldn't hear.

News: Yesterday a mother who was brought to join the "Thursday girls"  by her new Christian daughter came to know Jesus. The Gospel Singalong last Friday night was such joy to offer to the community. I can't offer a recording of it to you just yet. I am hatching up some ideas for more singing celebrations. ...probably in my home with small groups of Christians and their friends who may not know Jesus. My dining table is always set for receiving "angels unawares".  All of my beds are ready to be slept in by those He brings.  This next weekend son Jeff and dear daughter-in-law Carla will be here.  I had lunch with Sue and five of her friends from Bakersfield last Saturday at a restaurant in Tehachapi. They will be coming for an overnight soon. Michele and I will be in Round Top, Texas from October 9th until the 18th.  Carole and her daughter Lisa will be coming from Houston in November

Recently in my sewing room I found eighteen of those little crocheted stars my mother made that have waited all these years for me to stitch them together and center them in a pretty frame where they grace my lovely downstairs guest room. The tablecloth that was never completed blesses more people now than it might have had she finished it before she went to Heaven.

What will remain unfinished when I leave this earth? Will all I should have forgiven remain unforgiven?  Will all strained relationships be healed?  Will I leave behind a legacy of love and grace that will draw people to Jesus and not to me?

Many years ago in our first pastorate in Bakersfield,  California  the "Choralaires" sang for church, many kinds of clubs and gatherings in and out of town and once a week taped five five- minute segments called "Jo's Kitchen" that were broadcast on Family Radio from San Francisco to Phoenix.  Early this morning when I called my best friend Char to help me recall the words to this song that we sang so many years ago these were all we could remember.  If some of you former Choralaires are reading this blog and can remember more of the words, please Email them to me.

How rich I am since Jesus came my way
Redeemed my soul and turned my night to day
How rich, how very rich I am.

...and I am!

Love,  Jo