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Topic: Start (01/16/06)
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TITLE: Ruthie | Previous Challenge Entry
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01/22/06 -
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Rays of early afternoon January sun glimmered through the plantation blinds of the cobblestone church casting additional light on the large crowd gathered there. One by one the five ministers rose and shared their words of praise for the life of Ruthie. A middle-aged male voice vibrated through the crowd with the strains of How Great Thy Art.
Each speaker focused his attention on the group sitting in the front pews on the left side of the chapel. Each seemed to linger on a tall white-haired man near the center. Each spoke of events in the life of Ruthie, remembering her as a daughter, a wife, a mother. a friend and a Christian.
One pastor, gifted with a sense of truthful humor, rose to speak. He described the departed in such honest and realistic terms, even the white-haired man laughed. He told of visits to her home and how she had a knack of making people feel welcome. “She would greet her guests,”
he said, “telling them to come in and make themselves at home. What you see here is what you get.”
“There was always cake in the cake plate,” he continued. “Anyone coming into her home was welcome to help themselves.” The cakes were often plain pound cakes. “I don’t have time for
icings,” she said. “My cakes are good enough to eat plain.”
She told you exactly what she thought-sometimes-before you asked for her opinion. That it might differ from yours didn’t bother her. She had an opinion on the subject and she wanted you to know what it was. You always knew where you stood with her. These were the traits that made her lovable.
The younger faces in the group were forced to smile as word pictures were painted of the mother and grandmother they had known and loved. There was no flattery –just plain simple truth, as the character everyone had loved, was described in down-to-earth terms.
“She was ready to go meet Jesus,” the minister said. “She asked that we not grieve for her but to celebrate the good times. She loved you, but her time was up and Jesus had called her home. She asks that her family and friends release her from earth’s bonds and let her go. Remember the good times, forgive the bad times and join her in heaven someday.”
The sun’s rays focused on a tiny box sitting on the altar table at the front of the church, near an arrangement of flowers. The bronze in the tiny box seemed to glitter in the extra light. The soloist was singing again. This time his selection was “The Anchor Holds. The white-haired man had a glow on his face as he drank in the words of the singer. It was as though an unseen force was throwing out a lifeline and he was about to catch it.
As the organ music begins to play, the white-haired man and his large family rise and walk calmly and serenely down the aisle toward the door. These loved ones who knew her well, hear a throaty laugh, a sound only the departed could make. “Go on now, she is saying, “ I’m setting you free for a new start—beginning when you walk out the door. Remember, I’m in a good place. Come join me someday.”
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