Monday mourning yet rejoicing!

After our Saturday Beth Tephila services & almost two hours of Messianic worship dancing, we returned home to find a message that my last surviving grandparent, Evelyn House, is now with the Lord. Evelyn was a godly & spirited 97 year-old who was a mighty prayer warrior. She married my grandfather in mid-life for them both. Grandpa's previous two wives had died...my Dad's mother died while birthing her third child when Dad was seven years old...three years later, Grandpa married Alice & had two more sons. Grandma Alice died with heart problems when I was in 4th grade. Her funeral was the first funeral I remember attending. Her entire 7th grade class that she had been teaching was there. The church was so packed, people were looking in the windows to be able to take part. About 3 or 4 years after Alice's death, Grandpa met Evelyn. She had been an "old maid" farmer's daughter in the Bismarck, North Dakota area.

Grandma Evelyn was a model preacher's wife for years & years. When Grandpa - in his eighties -suffered strokes & other health problems, she - in her seventies - energetically took care of him, though he was nearly six feet tall & quite heavy, while she was just under five feet & slim. He died twenty years ago at the age of 86. Evelyn decided to stay in North Dakota near relatives & friends, living in her own apartment until she was 94. "Arthur", as she chose to personalize her arthritis, finally convinced her to move to a Lutheran nursing home. Only a couple of months after that move, the apartment complex she had lived in burned to the ground. The person who rented the apartment after her, perished in the fire, as surely as Evelyn would have, as slow moving as she was with "Arthur".

Yesterday I was reading 2 Corinthians 5: 1-5

We know that when the tent which houses us here on earth is torn down, we have a permanent building from God, a building not made by human hands, to house us in heaven. For in this tent, our earthly body, we groan with desire to have around us the home from heaven that will be ours. With this around us we will not be found naked. Yes, while we are in this body, we groan with the sense of being oppressed:it is not so much that we want to take something off, but rather to put something on over it; so that what must die may be swallowed up by the Life. Moreover, it is God who has prepared us for this very thing, and as a pledge He has given us His Spirit.

The part I highlighted here in green jumped out at me. God comforted me with this word picture of His Life swallowing Evelyn & dropping off "Arthur" & other ailments along the way. She is dancing with Him now as I write.