The Cracked Acorn: Out of the Blue

It is Friday 4th, January, 2019 and I never thought I would wake up with a VoiceMail on my TracFone. I stared at it as tho it was a virus. In today’s cellphone environment it is mostly ‘text’ and get the instant send/return. I did remember to press “1” and then follow the instructions, well enough. I was thwarted when it asked for a password…had none. At the end of the day, I had not mastered the learning curve to find out the who was leaving a Voice Mail for Moi. I found a TracFone box that had a 800 number. I needed a rest and decided to give the next day its due attention. Late on Saturday I used the 800 and chose “other” from the menu; a person answered and in ten minutes I was ready to open the VoiceMail.

The person in the message was the Piedmont Hospice Grief Consular; Gregg thought it was wonderful that we had chosen the route to medical science. Even donation has to pass inspection and I was shocked that in death…you still have to pass the test.

Sweden, and Japan and many small countries are running out of room for what we have come to know as the traditional burials. In Japan, cremation is the route; families are given a lease on a small plot that serves the need to visit and place flowers and etc. , when the lease is up, the urn is taken home and the plot is leased to the next family.

In older hymn books, is found a song I heard as a youth…ASLEEP IN JESUS,

I had been driven in a friend’s carriage through some of the exquisite green lanes in Devonshire,” wrote the author of this hymn the year before her death. “We paused at Pennycross, attracted by a rural burial-ground, and went in to look at the graves. It was a place of such sweet, entire repose as to leave a lasting impression on the memory. There were no artificial walks or decorations, but the grass was very green, and there were no unsightly signs of neglect. On one of the stones were the words, “Sleeping in Jesus.” It was in such entire keeping with the lovely and peaceful surroundings that it clung to my thoughts. On arriving at home I took a pencil and commenced writing the hymn, little thinking that it was destined to find so much favor, and that part of it would be inscribed on many tombstones.”

Mrs. Margaret Mackay was born in Scotland, and died at Cheltenham, England, in 1887, at the age of eighty-five.

“Asleep in Jesus! blessed sleep, From none ever wakes to weep!A calm and undisturbed repose, Unbroken by the last of foes.
Asleep in Jesus! O how sweet To be for such a slumber meet! With holy confidence to sing, That death hath lost its sting.
Asleep in Jesus! peaceful rest, Whose waking is supremely blest! No fear, no woe, shall dim that hour That manifests the Savior’s pow’r.” see Matthew 9:24