About 30 years ago, one of my brothers-in-law, Chuck, bought a tattered old scrapbook at a thrift store. It was apparently compiled by a young woman in the 1870s. Not having a blank book in which to preserve her treasures, she had glued all sorts of mementos to the pages of an existing book. Inside one finds newspaper clippings, poems, serial stories from “ladies’ magazines” of the day, and bits of homespun wisdom.

Thumbing through the book one recent afternoon, Chuck came upon the obituary of a Mrs. Sarah Hammond Sartain, who died in 1876 at the age of 31. A few days later, I received a photocopy in the mail. Written in the style of the 19th-century South, its words bear something unmistakably beautiful intertwined throughout: Christian faith and the language of the heart.

Mrs. Sarah Sartain … died at her father’s residence near Dandridge, Tenn., March 28th, 1876, aged 31 years, 1 month and 9 days. She had been a follower of Jesus from her girlhood, and died a worthy member of the M.E. Church. Her sickness was protracted but she was patient to the end, and her death was most triumphant. The family circle broken by her departure was a large one, and it appeared especially afflicting as she was the first to go; but they were all sustained by the grace of God, her mother and others praising God aloud. O it was good to be there. It was all light and no darkness at all. … She was rational to the end and left many precious sayings that we will remember. … Awhile before she slept she raised her feeble hands exclaiming, “Glory! Glory! Glory! I’m going home …”

When I began writing this column, I had planned to use words such as flowery and quaint to characterize Sarah’s obituary — as if the writer’s expression of faith was somehow antiquated or not as sophisticated as writers’ of today (even my own!). But as I read the words, “Awhile before she slept she raised her feeble hands exclaiming ‘Glory! Glory! Glory! I’m going home …’” I recognized there was something judgmental, even hazardous, about my attitude. In fact, there was no better, no more faith-filled way for the writer, or Sarah herself, to express where she was going by God’s grace — and perhaps what she was already seeing.

We live in an age that has judged itself to be smarter, and more “adult,” than ages past. We assume that because we know more from a scientific point of view, we therefore know better than our forebears of decades or centuries ago. We might even think of their faith as naïve, as if their experiences of life could not have been as complex, complete or well-informed as ours.

We would do well to let go of such prejudices and pray for a simpler, more spontaneous expression of our own faith — the same faith, in the same Lord and in the same resurrection of the dead found on the yellowing pages of our family scrapbooks. As I have learned more about my family through genealogical research, I have often been struck by the hardships and tragedies they endured, their perseverance and their heroic faith. There was nothing naïve about their real-world experiences or their real-world faith.

St. Paul called first-generation Christians to examine the alleged sophistications of their age in the light of God:

“Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature, but not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather, we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, and which none of the rulers of this age knew; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written: ‘What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,’ this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:6-10)

Beneath the clipping of Sarah’s obituary in my brother-in-law’s favorite scrapbook, its nameless collector had pasted an ageless bit of wisdom:

That was a good prayer of the old deacon: “Lord, make us willing to run on little errands for Thee.”

To pray to God in our own heartfelt words, as unembarrassed and unashamed, as sweet and as simple, and perhaps as desperate and forlorn as best describes the sentiments of our hearts — that is the path to an intimate friendship with him, as his heart speaks to ours. To make ourselves available for his purposes at any time, for the simplest and most humble of tasks — that is how we become his missionary disciples, going forth every day in his name.

The fact is, when our days on this earth are finished and we meet the Lord face to face, no words will express what we will then see and what we will then know. In fact, I can think of nothing better to pray as I kneel before the Lord each night here in the 21st century than “Glory! Glory! Glory!” And to add, “Lord, let me know what little errand you want me to run for you tomorrow. Amen.”

Northwest Catholic - July/August 2016