March 30 Devotion

My mother, Kate Christine Lockhart Blaine was born on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1891.

One of the pleasures of her life was teaching Sunday School and Bible study at Beale Chapel at Apple Grove for many years.

Baseball was my mother’s favorite sport. She liked the Cincinnati Reds and especially young Pete Rose. She had a picture of Pete taken from the front cover of a magazine and would tell her family and friends that he would be baseball’s best some day. I’m sure she would have been disappointed if she had known the problems Pete has had.

One Sunday in the early 70's, my son Larry and I took my mother to Cincinnati to see Pete Rose play with the Reds. On the way there, she asked us to stop at a church so she could attend morning service. She said she didn’t want to go to a ball game on Sunday without first going to church. We stopped along the way at a small church in Ohio at Russellville where she could attend the Sunday morning service.

On Wednesday evening prior to her sudden death on the following Friday morning, she taught a Bible class at Beale Chapel. Her lesson was on the following scripture:

Timothy 4:7-8. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

And she also read the following poem by Helen Steiner Rice that evening:

Death Opens The Door To Life Evermore

We live a short while on earth below,
Reluctant to die for we do not know
Just what “dark death” is all about
And so we view it with fear and doubt,
Not certain of what is around the bend
We look on death as the final end
To all that make us a mortal being
And yet there lies just beyond our seeing
A beautiful life so full and complete
That we should leave with hurrying feet
To walk with God by sacred streams
Amid beauty and peace beyond our dreams –
For all who believe in the RISEN LORD
Have been assured of this reward,
And death for them is just “graduation”
To a higher realm of wide elevation –
For life on earth is a transient affair,
Just a few brief years in which to prepareFor a life that is free from pain and tears
Where time is not counted by hours and years -
For death is only the method God chose
To colonize heaven with souls of those
Who by their apprenticeship on earth
Proved worthy to dwell in the land of new birth -
So death is not sad . . . it’s time for elation,
A joyous transition . . . the soul’s emigration
Into a place where the soul’s SAFE and FREE
To live with God through ETERNITY!

My mother died on June 29, 1973 at age 81.

Virginia B. Hensley