Preparing for Eternity

My mother had her 91st birthday recently. To attain her age is not a remarkable achievement in our present day but let me tell you some remarkable things about her.

She grew up with 10 siblings in a three room house with no insulation, no indoor plumbing and the only sources of heat were a fireplace, a pot-bellied stove and a wood-burning kitchen stove. They had their baths in a large metal tub. In the summertime they hauled the tub outside and drew water from a well for their bath. In the winter they had to heat water on the wood-burning stove for their bath water.

In the wintertime they would heat up a flat rock on the heath of the wood-burning fireplace. After the rock was warm, they would wrap it in a piece of cloth and take it to bed with them to warm their bed. An occasional radio program was their only  entertainment. The iceman would come once a week, and they would buy a couple blocks of ice for their ice box (that is not a colloquial term for an electric refrigerator!) When they ran out of ice, they would keep their milk cool in the earthen cistern where runoff rainwater from the metal roof was stored.

My dad was not only my mother’s soulmate for 72 years, but during the last five years before his passing he was also her eyes. Like her mother before her, my mother suffers from macular degeneration. For several years she has been legally blind. She can see very blurry images, but she manages to get around her home with the aid of a walker or a cane. She cannot read, and she shared with me that one of the things she misses the most is reading her Bible.

Each night since last year I have called my mother about 8 pm her time, and I read a devotional and pray with her. I usually read one of Rick Warren’s devotionals from the “Daily Hope” ap. My mother especially likes them because Allison has worked with Saddleback Church’s staff editing Rick’s sermons and presenting them in devotional form for nine years.

I have been cogitating a lot on one of the recent devos. It made the point that for eternity we will be serving the Lord, so all our life should be spent practicing being a servant so we will be good servants for the Lord for eternity.  I wish that years ago I had understood that fact like I do now. What a great lesson to teach our children and grandchildren—practice serving others on earth so we will better serve the Lord forever.

This is what God expects of us—to serve others in the name of our Lord and Savior. True service to others is not about what I can get out of my service to them, but it is all about what benefit I can render for the person I am serving.

Thank you, Lord, for providing a training ground during our lives on earth so that we can better serve you for eternity.