When I think on the most important life
lessons I learned growing up as my Mother’s daughter, I think of devotion to
God, love for His Word, faithfulness to one’s family, hospitality, generosity,
and so many other things… As I think on
early memories, my mom was so dedicated as an early elementary teacher, going
in early, staying late. Some of that had
to do with things taking longer for her to do because of her uncooperative
joints. When I think of our growing up
years, I am so thankful for mom and dad’s commitment to giving Jennifer and me so
many opportunities to grow in our faith.
In the summers when we were little, she hosted CEF’s 5-day clubs with
kids from the neighborhood sitting on giant blankets in the garage listening to
the flannel graph Bible stories. Later, there
were times we had 60 or 80 or maybe 100 teenagers in our basement on South
Wayne Drive…or running around playing crazy games as we hosted Campus Life once
in a while with Gerry Wiley and Bill Nelson leading. There was bobbing for apples and volleyball
and spinning around the bat game.
She loved opening our home.
I would imagine a great many people in this room have been the
recipients of my mom and dad’s hospitality.
Mom so frequently was the one orchestrating events and inviting people
into their home and that has always been a great example to me. I would never have learned that it’s
important to dust the leaves of one’s plants before company came over, if it
weren’t for my mom. J
My mother was very close to her
mother, my Grandma Harness, who many of you from LaPorte knew. For example, they both liked to write notes
to people, and they both loved to play
the game Racko… fairly competitively. But
the Word is full of admonition for us all to be mindful to pass down God’s
Story and his works and his love from generation to generation. As I got older, I observed and knew that my
grandmother read the Bible through completely at least once every year. And wouldn’t you know it, the same has been
true of my Mom and Dad for many many years.
They read it aloud, back and forth, before they go to bed each
night. What a testimony and witness to
me and to us of that passing down through
the generations in my family, the spiritual discipline of hiding God’s Word in
our hearts.
A powerful memory that I have of my mom in recent years that
shone a bright light, I thought, on where her heart is, was a few years
ago. Ben was turning 40 and I was
gathering ideas from our kids and others to make a list of 40 Things we Love
about Ben. So I was talking on the phone
with my mom one morning and told her about it and she, without even hesitating,
immediately began to list off one positive, godly attribute or strength of
Ben’s after another. Just rattled them
off. That spoke to me so deeply and was
a beautiful picture to me of what true encouragement and love looks like. It just genuinely poured out of her for her
son-in-law. And I know she had that for
not only for the Lord and her family members, but for many many friends. In fact, that’s another aspect of my mom’s
life that I have appreciated watching even as she and Dad have gotten
older. Mom invests in her friendships,
time, energy, service. She has many
friends here that she has had since she was very young. But she also has newer ones. It is extremely
easy in our day and age and culture to become very isolated. Mom continued- as most of you know- to want
to stay in touch and get together and be
with their Entertainment Group from church, her Operation Christmas Child
colleagues, as well as her family.
My mom was not perfect, of course. We shouldn’t even say silly things like
that. The whole point of the Gospel is
that we are all- each and every one of us- ‘hopelessly’ IMperfect-in desperate
need of a Savior. My mom bore some heavy
inner scars, I believe. She was what we sometimes refer to in foster or
adoption circles as a child from a hard place. She endured some hard things as a little
person which make an impact on hearts and minds. And yet, God stepped into that place even when
she was young, praise the Lord, and began to work in her to redeem her and
prepare her for where she is now.
My mother, Judy Schuster, liked to go all out- maybe you
noticed- in her service to the Lord. In
missiological circles, there’s this thing sometimes called apostolic passion. My mom had that and she passed it on to me,
and I’m so thankful to God for that.
Apostolic passion is what you might think of when you think of Paul. He wanted people to know about God who had
never had the opportunity to do so before.
It includes having a passion for the lost. This caused my mom to want to build
relationships with international students in their home, to support
missionaries whole-heartedly and get involved with things like Operation
Christmas Child. So I’m going to be
honest here, sometimes my mom was so crazy about OCC, that it made US
crazy! Ok, right? And I love OCC! But guess what, friends. The driving force for her in doing that
ministry was 100% pure and true passion for the Lord and for the lost.
In these recent years many
of us in her family were trying to get her to slow down and delegate some of
her shoebox endeavors. Not that we
didn’t love the ministry. But she was
really struggling with her health. She
and Dad were both having a hard time, especially when she fractured her back 2
years ago. And I was sitting at her
kitchen table with her one day and we were arguing, really, about it. “Mom, there are other things you can do. You need to let this go.” And I don’t know if there was any wisdom in
that or not. But listen today to her
response. It’s not original to her, I
don’t think, but with tears she said, “I don’t want to get to heaven all rested
up.”
And she didn’t. I know
there are people out there- many people- who have endured more than my mom
has. But I don’t really know them. Her body had a great many limitations,
compounded over the years until that body wore out with exhaustion. Her breathing paused here and now she is
breathing in the new air of the Kingdom and doing cartwheels beside the River
of Life. God has been so merciful. Praise God that Judy Schuster’s hope is the
same hope that we have. Amen.
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