Romans 12:7 “If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well.” (NLT)
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV)
While searching for an image for an upcoming video, I came across the painting by Homer Winslow. Immediately my thoughts went to my grandmother, with her Lord some 30 years now. She arrived here, armed with a teaching certificate, in what would have been then and still is to some a remote section of this country. She taught in a one-room school house. Later in life, she became a fan of the book "Christy" by Catherine Marshall because the character in that book began teaching at the same age and in the same year she did.
She would go on to marry a handsome logger and dairy farmer. They would have three children, one lost at birth, and ten grandchildren, two lost in adulthood. She was a farmer's wife and at one time a logging camp cook. She had a voice that couldn't carry a tune but could reach the far corners of the farm at dinner time. She was Grandpa's queen, or at least that's the way he treated her. She was my Grandma, which was good enough for me, actually it was pretty great for me and all of her grandchildren. Sill, she was so much more than what could be fit on her modest headstone in the old cemetery.
Grandma never stopped being a student and a teacher. She was gifted and intelligent, a self-taught, Old Testament Bible scholar. For years she taught the adult Sunday school class at her church. Her students were so loyal that when she could no longer make it to class on her own they brought her there. Then there were the individuals who would come to her home to seek her counsel. Four of her Bible studies were bound into modest books. That merited a picture and a short article in the local newspaper. I have thought that if she had been born in the second half of the 20th century, she probably could have made a name for herself. (She would have smiled at that thought, knowing that I sometimes had leanings towards the call to liberate women.) It truly didn't matter as long as God knew her name. She certainly tried to know her God, living a life consecrated to Him.
Not long ago, I learned that her books are now required reading for a seminary somewhere in Africa. We may never understand in this life what God has planned for us. I like to think that she may be teaching Bible classes still to the new arrivals in Heaven.
Let your light shine. There may be someone out there who needs to see it.
In Your Wind - Take My Life, Audra Lynn
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