Dear Friend,
I trust this finds you in good heart, enjoying the early days of spring that bring with them the prospect of summer and the salutary awareness that soon the year will be half spent. While it is true that the future comes in at the rate of sixty seconds per minute, these days in particular seem to fly by “swifter than a weaver’s shuttle” (Job 7:6).
Thinking of spring and now entering the month when we celebrate Mother’s Day got me pondering the fact that for more than fifty years, my own mother has been ‘“absent from the body and present with the Lord.” Resisting the temptation to bemoan the fact that she neither saw me married nor met her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I choose to use this moment to record my gratitude to God for the twenty years I enjoyed with her and to honor her memory. I do so in the hope that it will encourage others not to miss the opportunity time affords to make sure our mothers know how much we love and appreciate them. After all, many things in life come in twos and threes, but for each of us, there is only one mother in the whole world.
In case you are wondering, my mum was one of nine children, born to William and Louise Milliken in Glasgow in 1925. Her Christian faith was expressed in her actions as a wife, mother, friend, and encourager to all. Like a character in George Eliot’s Middlemarch, “the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive.” She was quiet and unassuming, loved animals, fed the birds on wintry mornings, and cared for my sisters, Maureen and Kathleen, and me with unselfish delight. She clearly believed that humor “doeth good like a medicine” (Prov. 17:22 KJV), and her ability to see the funny side of things caused me to do the same. She was part of a huge company that performed unhistoric acts while faithfully living a hidden life but known to and by the living God.
In what turned out to be her final letter to me, she unwittingly gave me a benediction in the words of Psalm 100:4–5:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
If you have ever wondered why the theme music for Truth For Life is the melody of the Hundredth Psalm, now you have the answer!
When I set out to write this letter, I had in mind the idea of addressing Mother’s Day from the perspective of a grandmother (obviously with help from Susan), but that will have to wait for another time. Our two books this month are chosen with family life in mind. I commend them to you warmly, hoping that you will find them immensely helpful. There is no doubt that a well-ordered family out in public is a powerful apologetic for the difference that Christ makes in a heart and in a home.
Day by day, we have visitors here at Truth For Life, and we really enjoy both hearing their stories and being able to thank them for their encouragement. So if you are anywhere near Cleveland in the coming months, please do stop in to say hello.
This comes, as ever with, my love in the Lord Jesus.
Alistair
