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Blessed Mystery

I Cor. 15:51-53

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

I write this little piece from my den. On the wall hangs a page of an old Dickson, Tennessee Herald newspaper edition from 1920. It features a picture of the old four-room Oak Grove schoolhouse that includes the entire 1920 student body (about 40 pupils) and one teacher. The picture is precious to me for a number of reasons: 1. My recollection is that some family member sent it to Jacquelynne who had it blocked, mounted, and framed. 2. She also had a brass plaque made for it that limned my family heritage from my great grandfather (1837) through my grandson (1989). 3. My father (then aged 14) is in the picture along with a lot of aunts and uncles. 4. In his adulthood, my dad became both a lawyer and a schoolteacher and for a time was the institution’s (all eight grades) only instructor. 5. When the country schools were regionalized, he bought the building and land from the county, and I was born there. 6. Later, after he retired, my father returned to the area and transformed the old school/family home into a Baptist church and even preached there on occasion.

I have childhood memories of many of the people gathered in front of the old school. I remember them  when they were in the full bloom of middle years. I played with their children. I slept in their homes and ate at their tables. The modern day is unlikely, I think, to reproduce the sense of family that was the common product of farm communities: generations of closeness, incubated in houses lit with oil lamps, and enjoying drinking water drawn in buckets from deep wells.

Of additional value is the fact that the scene reminds me of my own mortality. Every person captured in that photograph is DEAD! How could such a reality be borne except for the truth set for in our verse and others like it? Christ has His own among those memorialized in my picture. I shall see them again. In His redeeming work on behalf of His elect, He has saved them body and soul. Note that it is THIS corruptible and THIS mortal that will be changed into incorruption and immortality.

It beguiles the mind to wonder if on resurrection morning these folks will find the time to gather and take another picture?

George Moore
Elder Emeritus