I left feeling encouraged and uplifted. Nope…it wasn’t a party. It was a funeral! Virginia lived a full life of 81 years, and to most people, she would appear to be nobody special. She didn’t have a college degree. She spent her life as a homemaker and didn’t do a lot of the things that impressive people do. BUT…she DID do a lot of things that most people never do.
Her daughter Sheila shared how her Mama used to read the Bible to her so often, painstakingly pointing to each word, that Sheila already knew how to read when she started school. Virginia’s other daughter Rita shared what a prayer warrior her Mama was. She told how her Mama would kneel in front of the couch in prayer so much that her knees would become red. Rita laughingly confessed that she would copy her Mama, not so much to be praying, but to make her knees red like her Mama’s. She shared how she and Sheila would be lying in bed at night and hear their Mama praying for them in the den, especially on a day when they had bad attitudes. Nothing like lying in bed, convicted of your sin, hearing your Mama sick Jesus on you!
But Virginia didn’t just impact her immediate family. Cousins, nephews, and others talked about the impact she had left on their lives. How she and her husband Jerrell had opened their home to them, told them about Jesus, talked to them about Scripture, and taught them what was right.
She greatly impacted me, too. My family lived across the street. Rita and I were friends, and as a child, I spent many hours at their home. My family didn’t go to church, so I heard my first hymns at their house. Virginia had a beautiful voice and loved to sing with her daughters. I was intrigued by the strange lyrics that didn’t quite make sense to me. All this talk about the blood…what was that all about? But I loved the songs about God’s love and how He cares for us.
I remember one day getting excited about what I was learning at my friend’s house and going home to tell my parents some of the things our neighbors were telling me about God. But my parents made fun of me. They asked me if I thought I was going to float off to heaven like the good Baptists across the street. I was crushed….BUT…GOD WASN’T DONE YET….
Even though the seeds of the gospel had been planted in my heart as a child by those sweet neighbors, it wasn’t until years later that other people came along and watered those seeds. When I was 16 years old, I went to a Young Life meeting and finally understood what those songs about the blood meant. Ms. Virginia had told me that Jesus died for our sins. But I had thought that meant that Jesus was so upset over our sins that He died. I didn’t understand until that night at Young Life that Jesus died IN MY PLACE TO PAY THE PENALTY FOR MY SIN. I received the glorious gift of salvation that night, but I knew that God had first begun tugging on my heart when I was a child, listening with a heart full of wonder to my friend’s Mama telling me about this God that I did not know. AND GOD WASN’T DONE YET….
God did a great work, but not just in me. My mother later attended Bible study with me and eventually came to know Christ. She began studying the Bible on her own and became active in church, serving in various capacities. When she got older, she would tell me, “I talk to the Lord all the time.” And I would laugh as I’d hear her asking Him to help her find something she had misplaced. Eventually her dementia took her mind and her life. But I know where she is. I know I will see her again. And I wonder if that is only true because a neighbor planted some seeds.
So, even though I felt uplifted and encouraged by this funeral, I also felt convicted. I want to have a heart for souls like Ms. Virginia did. I want to care about whether my neighbors and their children know Christ. And I want to plant seeds. Lots of seeds. There are other lives where GOD ISN’T DONE YET.
I was also convicted because I wish I had been that kind of mother to my own children. I wish I had set the same kind of spiritual example to persevere in prayer as Ms. Virginia did. But, you know, it’s never too late. And I have grandchildren now to teach. AND…MAYBE…JUST MAYBE…GOD STILL ISN’T DONE YET. 🙂