Day 21: Remember as we Listen Part 2

The tractor struggled up the hill,

and the farmer tried desperately to

maintain control,

but the front end shook and rocked,

and before he knew it,

he was pinned under the seat of an

upside-down deadweight of a machine.


 His cries for help were heard by the 

farmwife,

who gathered up their young infant son,

and placed him in the backseat of their 

1940's car, and ran to see

how she could help her farmer.

All the while, she was crying out to her God,

with no one else to help,

how could she possibly move that heavy tractor

away from the leg of her farmer,
broken and bleeding under the steel. 


  With a burst of strength beyond herself,

she lifted the tractor

far enough

for the farmer to inch his way out.

But then, the leather shoestrings were caught in the wheels.

Again, her strength surged within her

as she broke that last bit of bondage

away from her farmer's foot.


 She drove her farmer to the hospital,

and he recovered from that breaking,

to tell the story

again and again,

how his farmwife

rescued him from the grip of that old tractor.


 But she knew the truth:

it was not her rescuing at all--

God had given the strength

and God would be praised in her telling

of the story

how her farmer was

rescued from the grip of that monster.

------


The farmwife was my Mom, and I grew into the telling of that story just as I grew into my own life stories. 
My Mom loved to tell her stories.
It became a joke between my siblings and I, that 
we could tell HER stories
better than we could tell our own.


But she understood the meaning of these verses:

Psalm 78:1-4 (NIV) My people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old— things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.


And  she made sure that we listened so that we would 
know the praiseworthy deeds of our Lord.


My Mom is no longer with us, she is with her 
Farmer enjoying their Lord together in Heaven.
So, now the telling is left to me.


I am the Grandma with stories to share.
And the littles gathered in my lap--
will they hear the praiseworthy deeds of our Lord?

(Visiting a farm with my Grandson, in 2014, and carrying on the story-telling.)
  

If we listen to the words of our Lord,
He has a story for us to share.
A new generation is waiting to hear from us the
ways that our God rescued us
from the grip of sin's chains
and set us free to find HIS life.




Today is Day 21 of the #Write31Days Challenge.

If you have missed any of the posts for this 
#31Days of Listening with Chronic Illness,
and would like to catch up

click here for the Series Index 

Thank you to all who have been praying for me with this latest round of testing. The Nurse called as I finished this post with
the WONDERFUL NEWS that
both biopsies are benign!
I am rejoicing in God's Good Story for me today!