First, I’m old enough to be a grandparent. On top of that,with each successive birthday party of the parents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ generation, the painful contemplation sets in that the circle of the older generation grows smaller and smaller. If I’m going to be a grandparent, does that mean that I am old enough, too, to receive the torch of “patriarchhood” from the preceding generation and bear it forth for the next?
Egads, yikes! I don’t like birthday celebrations, even when they’re not my own, nearly as much as I did forty-five years ago. (Did I say “forty-five?” Ouch. And that allows for me being a ten year old kid at the time.)
Such sobering thoughts remind me (and us) that the surviving members of our parents’ generation really are the family treasures. That’s why Mama’s birthday party yesterday, with Daddy and Aunt Marion on either side and dear old Aunt Pearl (below, out of this picture) was significant.
So what’s all this to me? I suppose it’s that God really is our portion, and if He sees fit for me to live as long and as full as they, I’ll know that grace has covered me well, all the more than it has covered me already.
So I do manage to conclude with a cheerful thought! And added to that cheerful thought, a wish: Long live the preceding generation so that I’m not charged with bearing the torch of patriarchhood any sooner than I have to!
Inventio! 