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Psalm 48:14 Good News Translation
14 “This God is our God forever and ever;
he will lead us for all time to come.”
Grampa lived with us
during his last six years. For much of his life he successfully ran his own
feather-duster factory in Buchanan, Michigan. Around the year 1900 he became a
Seventh-day Adventist. Always insistent on doing everything with his might, he
sat his son and daughter down and read E.G. White books to them by the hour.
Margaret, his wife,
was blest with good practical wisdom. She took him to task: “Now Papa, you’re
going to drive them away from Christ if you keep this up!” He heeded her
warning, and the two kids grew up to be his strong supporters.
My mother came as a
surprise to the family in 1907. The whole family doted over her and spoiled
her. “I never received a spanking,” she would tell me while she wielded the
wooden spoon on my backside. I needed it.
When Grampa turned
55, he decided that he had had enough of the entrepreneurial world. He sold his
factory and packed the whole family out to the foothills of the Ozark Mountains
in Oklahoma. Here, about ten miles outside of the tiny hamlet of Hulbert, the
hillbilly children were growing up without any education. When he and Gramma
started Ozark Mountain School, they had first graders as old as 21. He raised
all of the funds necessary to operate this school from donations, mainly from
businessmen in Chicago. Gramma ran the school, functioning as principal,
teacher, disciplinarian, dean, and matron.
The sign on the gate
read as follows:
Children who Can’t
pay
are welcome Here
Children who Can pay
are welcome Elsewhere
When my mother,
Esther, turned fourteen, they roped her into teaching in the school. In the mid-1920s
she went off to college and earned a bachelor’s degree. In 1932 she married
Fred Clarke, and in 1936 they arrived in Africa as Seventh-day Adventist
missionaries. I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1942.
Gramma passed away
in early 1946, and Grampa joined us in South Africa in 1948. He was fiercely
independent, and even at 78, he started selling Christian books door to door to
support himself. At 85 years of age, he suffered a stroke that caused a steady
decline in his health. He passed into a coma that lasted several days. Finally
on May 7, 1954, he awoke from his coma. He was very lucid and chatted with a
number of people in the house. When he specifically asked to see me, aged 12,
they ushered me into his room and left me alone with him. He told me that he
was dying and urged me to promise that I would see him in Heaven when all the
righteous dead are raised to eternal life. Although I was not as yet a baptized
Christian, I made a solemn promise that I would be there. Not many minutes
later he passed to his rest.
I have never
forgotten that promise, and by the grace of Jesus Christ, I will indeed keep
that promise. I trust that God, our God, will lead me for all time to come to
that reunion.
Thank You, Lord, that I can trust You to lead me
until the end.
