Building Our Lives With Gold, Silver And Costly Stones
Earlier this fall I spent a bit of time at a nursing home, just sitting and watching and waiting. Each day I came to admire the elderly residents more and more.
They had such a lovely spirit about them, and an eagerness to just carry on.
Our elderly of today are the members of what we call the "Greatest Generation."
The term was coined by journalist Tom Brokaw to describe the American generation that grew up during the Depression and then fought in World War II.
When I was a young girl growing up in the 1950s, many of the dads in my neighborhood had served in the war. There was something special about those men. They were serious and steady. They never talked about "the war," but history tells they served on U.S. Navy ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and they were in the U.S. Army marching into Berlin and liberating concentration camp prisoners.
During those terrible war days, they dreamed about coming home to loving wives and happy homes filled with lots of children. When the war ended, they did just that. They got married, started their families, bought homes and went to work.
When I was a kid, the moms in my neighborhood kept very busy raising their large families, cooking and cleaning their homes, and being faithful Catholics.
I'm in a Bible study, and we recently read the words from 1 Corinthians 3 reminding us that, "no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
The words from verses 12-15 tell us, “If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
“If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.”
As I remember those young mothers and fathers from long ago, I recall that their lives were built on faith and family. Those two elements made up their foundations. Those two elements were their gold, their silver and their costly stones. They didn't seem to need or have time for the wood, the hay or the straw – the things that Corinthians reminds us will perish in the fire.
Of course, they didn't have the distractions of hundreds of channels on their TV sets, or Facebook or computer games – today's wood, hay and straw. Those are often the things we spend so much time on. They are the things that have no lasting value, the things that will be destroyed by fire.
Now, the members of the Greatest Generation are leaving us.
As I count my blessings this Thanksgiving, I remember those men and women who led by example and who shaped my childhood.
I am thankful for all of them. I pray they will be richly rewarded.
