Quiet Inspirations.

1 Thess. 4:11-12:

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

This picture is the background image on my phone. The sweet face you see belongs to my grandmother, who has been in heaven since the summer of 2006. Her husband, my grandpa, entered heaven's gates about 17 years before her arrival. Though most of my life I lived about a mile and half away from her, I honestly feel like I didn't "know know" her inside and out. And yet somehow she serves as a quiet inspiration. She was a quiet, peaceful, simple, cat-loving, pleasant, enduring woman...


This is my other grandma. Just this afternoon and evening she, my grandpa, and I spent time talking, eating, playing a game, and walking out onto the dock and a bit around the premises. They are quite active and settled into their community. She revealed her sensitivity in a passing comment that just last week (I believe) she felt (maybe told my grandpa) that she just didn't want to live in their community anymore -- others' sicknesses and perhaps deaths were getting to her tender heart. Though she likely feels grateful for her home and probably in reality would not want to move, it must be hard to live where death and sickness knock at neighbors' doors. People who live in those environments must have a deeper understanding and appreciation of Psalm 90:12 -- "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." Perhaps many surrounded by death and sickness have been taught to number their days and have received this heart of wisdom.


And this is Barbara. I wonder if she'll ever know how much of a heart print she has left on me. She is such an amazing woman who shared her hospitality and home to host a small group for volunteers of a ministry of which I was part. Her kind gesture impresses upon my heart the importance of loving fellow believers who are engaged in ministry. We must not only love outwards, but inwards as well. "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers" (Galatians 6:10).