Open for me the gates where the righteous enter,My mother is coming today to visit for a little more than a week. We are ready for her, she has a guest room all set up, we have planned the menus for the week she will be here.
and I will go in and thank the Lord.
These gates lead to the presence of the Lord,
and the godly enter there.
I thank you for answering my prayer
and giving me victory! (Psalm 118:19-29)
We have done all we can think of to get ready for her to come. And we are a big nervous. I haven’t seen her since last February for a brief time when my father passed away and hadn’t seen her before that for a couple of years.
My parents have always lived far from us. we always went wherever I felt the Lord taking us and most of the time that was a long ways from their home in first Houston, TX, and then Tyler, TX.
We have lived in Washington State, Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma and Missouri, all of which was a far piece.
In fact, we have always lived so far away that when I spent a few years in Houston pastoring a church, we had gotten used to not visiting much. It was almost as if we still lived a long ways off.
And my family was never a close family. When Ella and I got married, I was in the army and we went for six months in Germany. Nothing sets a marriage as independent like moving 5500 miles away from the folks. We became our own unit and have remained so all our lives.
I wish I had spent more time with them now, but it is too late. So I look forward to her coming.
We have some differences, one of which is church. She is a member of a very exclusionist group, one I ministered with for twenty years. I moved away from it, but she never did.
As a result, we are never sure whether or not she will attend with us. She and my father usually go to one of their churches when they visit us. It is sad, but it is also the way it is, so things are probably not going to ever be different.
But I look forward to her coming, and we will do out best not to have any arguments or strong differences of opinion while she is here. I will do what I need to do to keep it harmonious. She is, after all, 82 and will probably not change.
And besides, I love her. If I can put up with the peccadilloes of older women in the church as I have for forty years of ministry, I can surely make things better and easier for my mother.
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