“I was all she had.”
One summer Sunday after a weekend homeschool convention, Ray and I visited the home church of a couple of mamas we had met at the convention. After church we went out to lunch with them and their families. We folks, who had been complete strangers a couple of days before, shared our hearts for our families around the lunch table. It was a precious time.
We heard two powerful lessons at church that day. The sermon was about being still (I hope to tell you about that another day) and the Sunday School class was about godliness. The lesson was good, but the most powerful teaching we received about godliness came when class was over.
At the beginning of Sunday School, we had been introduced as class visitors and the teacher had asked where we were from. After class an elderly man in front of us turned around to introduce himself. He made a Tennessee connection by telling us that he had gone to Harding Graduate School (now Harding School of Theology) in Memphis, Tennessee. That was a happy connection because that is the school where Ray got his Master’s in New Testament.
The man then told us that he had only stayed there for two semesters because his mother had a heart attack and he returned home . . .
. . . “because I was all she had.”
Let your father and your mother be glad,
And let her rejoice who gave birth to you.
Proverbs 23:25