Good Fruit...

Dear Friend,

Recently I shared with you about the passing of my grandmother. I need to share with you a little bit about who this woman was to this world. I could probably write an entire book about her. She was famous, even if she wasn't famous. She was light, love and peace. Wherever she went and whomever she encountered would tell you the same thing. She was significant to everyone and everything, and did it with an eleventh (11th) grade education. She was stability, she was grace, she was peace and she was brave. She was a writer, teacher, mother, wife, counselor and so much more.

She was the first woman I would experience in ministry, first as a missionary (because it was unheard of a woman in the pulpit in her era) next as an evangelist. She would spread the gospel like wildfire and I remember going with her to preach to what seemed like the nations. But what I loved most about my grandmother is her love and compassion for people. No matter how "bad" you were, my grandmother just didn't give up on you. She would find something good about everyone. I guess i get that from her. My grandmother would not cancel you out, she would pray you through.

Matthew 7:16, "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?" Yesterday the funeral director owner, our cousin called my mom to tell her, "Jannie, when the embalmer came to prepare your mother, He said that he could tell she was a woman of God, her body for her age and the things that she had gone through was flawless, the embalming process, flawless, he was amazed at what she looked like internally." I was not, because even until death, you shall know them by their fruits. My grandmother's insides reflected who and what she was. She was love, light and beauty in the inside. I am reminded that every good and perfect gift comes from above. We are His first fruits here on earth. We are His representation to others, and if we live accordingly to that, then we get to experience the greater glory here as well as on earth (see James 1:13-18).

I am pretty sure when she got in the inspection line, she exemplified "good fruit".

Check out today's coffee and conversations: Hold On It's ALL Worth it. https://youtu.be/4KOqGuqd2Zw

Blessed to be a blessing,

LMJ