Thankful

We apologize for the lack of posts recently! It just seems that this season of the year always flies by!! We are so thankful for you regular blog readers and will try to be more faithful in the future to our at-least-once-a-week-post promise!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here celebrated with American, Albanian, and Korean members of our church. It was so good to gather together, enjoy good food, share what our hearts are thankful for, and sing together. There were about 40 of us gathered together in a large restaurant, sharing our potluck style meal. Thanksgiving is my (Gretchen’s) favorite holiday as it always reminds me of wonderful family reunions that took place in my family every year for 25 years! The last 2 years I have not been able to make it, but my heart is still thankful for such a wonderful Christian heritage.

Even though the Thanksgiving holiday is over, and we are all looking forward to Christmas, I thought I would share something, rather someone, that I am extremely thankful for. Tomorrow (December 3) marks the one year anniversary of my grandmother’s going to heaven. Athalda (Addy) Mull is still—and will always be—one of my heroes in the faith. Her life, perseverance, joy, character, diverse interests, intense love for individuals, her undying service to Jesus, were like a drink offering poured out to the Lord. Her words were generous and encouraging until the end, although made child-like by debilitating strokes in the end of her earthly life. To me her life was the perfect picture of one of my favorite summarizations of the Christian life found in 2 Corinthians 4. Here is the text, verses 11-16:

“For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”

Ask anyone who knew her – as Addy, Mom, or Grammie. Her abiding joy was Christ. Her mortal body certainly wasted away, slowly and painfully at times. Yet it was ever so clear that her inner spirit was being renewed day by day as she got closer and closer to gaining Christ in her death.

Thank you, Grammie, for your example in the Lord. Thank you, Lord, for such a great cloud of witnesses that surrounds me and has gone before me. Like Addy Mull, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”. (Hebrews 12:1)