Sojourners on this Earth

This morning my reading in 2Corinthians 5 caused me to remember a beautiful woman who was present for about twenty years of our married life. Lozanne’s great aunt was known by all as Ma Tante Delina. Lozanne is named after her great aunt and her second name is actually Delina. I first met Ma Tante when she was in her early seventies. Given the youthful energy that this woman quite simply exuded, you would be hard pressed to guess her proper age. She was happily married to Uncle Charlie who has been profiled in an earlier blog. As happens in most happy marriages, in my observation at any rate, he and she were complete opposites. Delina and Charlie were childless. Delina always seemed to be on the move, working in her home or visiting many and all relatives both close and extended. She was a hostess beyond description.

Each and every Monday morning, I suspect for all her adult life, Delina baked bread. It was the best bread, especially when toasted, I have ever enjoyed. Most evenings, summer and winter, at about 9:30 P.M. would find family members, who had just happened to drop by, in her dining room enjoying her special toast with her homemade preserves and a cup of tea. The conversation was always interesting and lively. Of course Uncle Charlie, after he had scrubbed his hands like he was about to perform surgery, would not partake of the toast but high fibre cereal he referred to as “his hay”.

Three or four times per week, Delina would entertain guests for dinner. She is the only cook I have ever observed who almost exclusively used a “Presto” pressure cooker. This large pot with a locking cover was heated on the stove element and the contents were kept under great pressure. Delina deftly and expertly knew exactly when to let off the steam and continue cooking. Cooking food under pressure speeds up the process considerably. I often wondered about the dangers of working with heated pots under great pressure, but she never had accident that I know of. All the while she was moving with incredible speed about her kitchen, she was very capable of interacting with and indeed engaging her guests in a running conversation. All of us looked forward to a dinner at Ma Tante Delina’s. Children were always welcome and doted upon by Delina.

Following one such dinner, Delina suggested that she take our youngest two children to the park for some after dinner exercise and perhaps some ice cream. Since she was in her eighties, we suggested that the kids did not need to go to the park. In about ten minutes, we realized that the little ones were missing and went out just in time to see Delina actually sliding down a gravel embankment in order to cross the railroad tracks to take the kids to the park. They did indeed get their ice cream in the park. When approaching little ones, Delina often chanted in a scary voice as she moved along, “Ma jambe d’or” which I have only theorized was a line from a French ghost story about a man with a golden leg. Oddly, I never observed a child who showed any fear as they were always delighted with her presence.

For the last couple years of her long lifetime, she would often ask anyone who would listen, “Why am I still here?”. After Charlie had passed away and she finally had to enter the old age home, she wondered indeed why she was still alive. I remember her asking me that very question the day before she passed away at ninety- two years of age. This morning I thought of Delina as I read very similar words written by the Apostle Paul in 2Corinthians 5: 1-2.

1 ¶ For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven,

What Delina had come to understand was that we are but sojourners on this earth. The time we spend here in this world is very brief when compared to the forever of eternity. Like Delina, Paul actually groaned when wondering, no doubt, why he was still trapped here in an old weak body and not there in a new glorified body where he knew he would be for eternity. I am just beginning in the last little while to understand much more why Delina would ask the question, “Why am I still here?”.

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