Don't Hesitate!

              Don't Hesitate!
I John 5.9-13 Seventh Sunday of Easter May 12, 1991
God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has
life...I write these things so that you may know that you have eternal life.
This a time for reflection (for meditation), and reflexion (a time for turning
something inward) as the French say.
Madonna, Mother Teresa, Yvonna Trump, Debbie Reynolds, Liz Taylor,
Nancy Regan, Zsa zsa Gabor, Barbara Bush, Jane Pauley and Coretta Scott
King.
John Gould writes about this mother's day. He says it is always somewhat
of a threat to remember your mother when your spouse is present. So he
speaks of his great grandmother. She was a Coombs from Hardscrabble.
She was a typical woman for her time, 1780. By the time she was 13 she
shot her first bear. Woman didn't know anything about the concept of
emancipation. When she was 18 she was already married with 2 children,
with a third on the way. Lucy went to the woods to chop down trees, part
of the work they had to do to clear the 100 acres they had just bought for
four pounds. Three miles away a sawmill was being constructed.
Great grandmother was great with an ax. Great grandfather had given her
one for a wedding present. She was proud of it, kept it honed to a razor
edge, and wiped it with bacon rind to prevent rust. Great grandfather's
friends called her "hearty". You didn't describe ladies as husky or heavy or
huge. But when she swung an ax the chips flew.
Clearing fields was a big job. They saved the best logs for the house which
took almost ten years to build from stump to ridgepole. During that time
she broke four ax handles. Great grandfather was upset over that because
they had to be handmade. On her 23rd birthday he gave her a new ax, and
one for the older boy. He couldn't afford a new one for himself, having
bought two. With all of this she had time to give baths to the children out
of a bucket set on a stump. Gould says, "his wife listens and laughs and
ends up saying, "they just don't make mothers the way they used to."
I. This Sunday celebrates life, three kinds of life.
A. The first is that which is given to us through the natural
process of procreation.
1. Ever since Adam and Eve lived outside of Eden children
have been born. I wonder what that first mother thought.
Cain, the excitement of discovery. Abel, so different but
a boy too. With their birth came the birth of becoming a
father, and a mother.
2. Motherhood has gone through interesting cycles of history
and understanding. Motherhood denied was seen as God's
foreclosure. Abraham and Sarah conceive in their old
age, an only child Isaac. Isaac falls in love with a woman
named Rebecca and to them were born twins, Esau and
Jacob. Isaac loved Esau and Rebecca loved Jacob.
Preferences emerge. The story has it that Rebecca