Which Reminds Me

My great-grandparents spent some time in China as missionaries there mostly in the 1910s and early 1920s. She doesn't say very much about that on the tape, just says that while her husband was busy operating a mission there and preaching the gospel she was mostly busy having babies. In addition to the seven children that lived there were two babies that didn't live, Philip and Anne. Then they returned to the U.S. On the taped interview of her, she says that there comes a point when you just can't "keep going." Some busybodies may want to load that point with a lot of theological meanings that perhaps were not intended by her. Ok, so, yes, in everyone's life there are seasons. We are strangers and pilgrims in this life, as the New Testament says. So they were called to China for a time and then later they were called to go somewhere else and then eventually they retired near their children in Pasadena, California, and then eventually they were called to go home to be with the Lord in heaven as we would imagine. Fine. With seven children it is not so easy to be a missionary. Nowadays the missions department has rules about that but in the old times there weren't so many rules. But anyway to each there is a Great Commission calling of some sort. How that works out in real life may not necessarily be manifest in a career sort of way. Sometimes it is just too personal to discuss with persons who don't really understand anyway. I am just saying.