Grandmas and Sisters

My precious, hilarious, adorable, unique Grandma Mel is asleep in the room next to mine. I picked her up this evening from Loma Linda where she was visiting my Grandpa Bud in the hospital as he recovers from a surgery. I drove her to Highland; we went to the grocery store together where she tried to buy way too many strawberries and scads of whipped cream; we talked while I filled up the car at the gas station; I drove her up 330, using almost every turnout so she would still have feeling left in her fingers and perhaps not squeeze the door handle so tightly; Joanna (who I love for treating my grandma like a jewel) made a wonderful dinner for us and Grandma played with all the monkeys. Then I brought her home to my house to stay the night.

She loves me so thoroughly. When Liann's grandma passed away, Liann said part of the reason it was so hard was, "there's just no one who loves you like a grandparent. It's so complete and accepting."

Going into the bathroom tonight to brush my teeth, I could hear my grandma's voice as she talked to Liann; I was suddenly seven years old again. There's even a Thermador on the wall to make it a visual flashback to being at her house, brushing my teeth in her bathroom. It sounds ridiculous, but I was overcome with gratitude for being her grandchild, that of all the grandmas, all the women in the world, I belong to her.

Getting ready for bed in her house was joyful, safe, fun. It didn't occur to me to try to be better than I was, to worry about the day to come, to question her love for me even if I had been corrected in the afternoon. She rejoices over me. And I never doubt her love for one moment. I feel it all through me.

God, thanks for a moment to cry over the beauty and tenderness of You toward me through Grandma Mel.
__________

I have a sister in Indonesia. She sucks down whipped cream gas better than anyone I have ever seen, and is one of the most genuine, honest, bright spirits I have been blessed to know. She told me that the May 18, My Utmost for His Highest was just what the doctor ordered for hearts with holes. I'm so glad she is a day ahead of us in the States so she could tell me about it, and I could grab it and put it here for me and for us.

I love you, too, Sister Princess. Thanks for wanting to learn, too.

CAREFUL UNREASONABLENESS
"Behold the fowls of the air." . . . "Consider the lilies of the field." Matthew 6:26, 28 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they simply are! Think of the sea, the air, the sun, the stars and the moon - all these are, and what a ministration they exert. So often we mar God's designed influence through us by our self-conscious effort to be consistent and useful. Jesus says that there is only one way to develop spiritually, and that is by concentration on God. "Do not bother about being of use to others; believe on Me" - pay attention to the Source, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. We cannot get at the springs of our natural life by common sense, and Jesus is teaching that growth in spiritual life does not depend on our watching it, but on concentration on our Father in heaven. Our heavenly Father knows the circumstances we are in, and if we keep concentrated on Him we will grow spiritually as the lilies. The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mould us. If you want to be of use to God, get rightly related to Jesus Christ and He will make you of use unconsciously every minute you live. Taken from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. (c) l935 by Dodd Mead & Co., renewed (c) 1963 by the Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and is used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.