Things My Mum Said

This time last week I was preparing to go off on a silent retreat.  This time now I am preparing to go to meet my family and share together in the loss of mum. 

Last week I sat with God sharing all my concerns about the day.  I can at times go off the deep end and I asked God to walk with me only in those places He wanted me to go.  Today I find myself praying the same kind of thing. 

Last week I picked up a book in the chapel and after reading a while, made a note of the title and author, intending to buy the book and read it slowly - “Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ” by Jeanne Guyon.  Having read the first couple of chapters I am finding it’s not a book I wish I had written – I come across a lot of those.  It is a book I wish I had lived.  I am shocked to discover, even in the first couple of chapters, that the life I claim to live, so close to Christ, isn’t really that close at all.

I doubt whether my mum ever read the book.  It is a possibility.  But I am finding the things my mum said in the pages of Jeanne’s book. 

“I give you an invitation: If you are thirsty, come to the living waters.  Do not waste your precious time digging wells that have no water in them” (John 7:237; Jeremiah 2:13)

“If you are starving and can find nothing to satisfy your hunger, then come.  Come and you will be filled.

“You who are poor, come.

You who are afflicted, come

“You who are weighed down by your load of wretchedness and your load of pain, come.  You will be comforted.

“You who are sick and need a physician, come.  Don’t hesitate because you have diseases.  Come to the Lord and show Him your diseases and they will be healed!

“Come!"

Anyone who has known my mum and been in the same worship meeting as her will recognise her familiar “Come!” call.  She would sometimes grab hold of my arm and whisper it urgently into my ear.  All I had to do was to come.  All that God wanted from me was for me to come to him.  Any resource I needed was with him.

She didn’t always do what she told me to do, what Jeanne said to do.  In those times when she didn’t “come”, God was so gracious and He did the coming. 

I think there were times when she would have liked to shoo Him away.  She wanted to be rebellious and do her own thing.

But God never went.

God doesn’t stop saying “Come!” He said it to Jeanne Guyon in 1685.  He said it to my mum throughout her life.  It is message that He is always saying to His children,

“Come!”