Death, Where Is Your Sting?

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Today's Passage: 1 Corinthians 15: 50-58
Memory Verse: 1 Cor.15: 55-56

Today's blog is going to be in honor of a pretty awesome woman.  One who was placed on this earth seventy-nine years ago, and made quite an impact until she took her last breath during the early hours of this morning.  Her name was Nora Giddings Howard, and she was my mother.  Mommy, as I affectionately called her, carried seven children of her own, but she was mama to many.  At an early age, I learned that a huge pot with enough food for everyone who came by was an outward sign of the equally huge heart within her.

If I could find some adjectives to describe Mommy, one of them would be strong.  How she found the strength to wake up early every weekday and go to work at the government hospital, come home and minister to the patients who came to our walk-in clinic, then wake up in the middle of the night to deliver a baby, only God knows.  But in spite of all that, do you think she'd even consider sleeping in on Saturday mornings?  No way.  She was a passionate gardener, and she had two farms in the interior part of our country that she had to go oversee every other weekend.

Another word that comes to mind about my mom is devoted to God.  With some of the religious practices in Liberia involving idol worship, my parents made the decision to turn away from those things when they were introduced to Jesus Christ through some Lutheran missionaries who gave them scholarships to receive nursing training.  Christ being the foundation of their lives, they made a decision to follow Him by raising us to fear Him.  I can still see the family altar we had almost every night, singing songs of praise to the Lord before kneeling to pray as a family.  Many years later, my mother would find comfort and peace between the pages of God's Word when she lost my father and had to spend the next 16 years without him.

Even as I process the pain of realizing that I won't be hearing her voice again on this side of heaven, I receive comfort in knowing that though absent in the body, she is present with the Lord.  Every ounce of pain has been removed, and death for her is swallowed up in victory.  May my life be a fraction as full of purpose as hers was, and may the fruit of her labor be seen in her children's children for God's glory.

Prayer: Father, You do ALL things well.  Thank You for a life well-lived, and for using my mother's life to be the example You meant it to be for us all.  I praise You for Your infinite wisdom and for seeing fit to call Your servant home.