Yesterday morning I was sitting on my kitchen floor looking through a stack of cookbooks to find daisy petals. Although I thought I knew which cookbook I had put them in to be pressed and dried six weeks prior, they were not in the expected place, so I was leafing through every book on the shelf to find them. As it turned out, they ended up being in the book I thought I’d placed them, but another discovery was made during the search, which is worth sharing this morning.
One of the cookbooks was a Christmas gift to my grandparents in 1977. It is an interesting mix of testimonies and recipes from such well-known Christian women as Dale Evans Rogers, Ethel Barrett, and Ruth Bell Graham. Tucked in between the pages was a paper cut from a church bulletin, with a line in my Grandma Ballard’s handwriting:
“This my assignment too.” Those words were penned over forty years ago, yet they reach across the decades to find resonance with every TGP team member, for this is why we each signed up to pray. There is a cause and commission so vital that it stirs the hearts of those who love Jesus to do what they can to make Him known in every place. “From the rising of the sun to the going down of the same the LORD’s name is to be praised.” (Psalm 113:3) Amen, may it ever be.
My grandma never had the opportunity to take an overseas mission trip, yet in more ways then can be elaborated here, her influence for the kingdom of God continues to reach places her feet never traveled. She was the baby girl referenced in last Sunday’s TGP post on Hoyt, Colorado, and, similar to what was spoken of Abel in Hebrews 11:4, she “being dead still speaketh.”
When I read the page above, I immediately thought of you all. Thank you for likewise taking up the mantle of prayer for Jesus to be known to the peoples of the world. I hope that reading both my grandma’s words and the printed poem and paragraph are an encouragement to each of you. Additionally, let us be challenged by the fact that our lives have the potential to encourage others long after we’re gone, as illustrated by the random finding of a paper yesterday morning.
I Corinthians 15:58 – “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for as much as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
