HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NOAH

My first grandson, Noah, was born sixteen years ago today during the cosmic time of the Hale Bop Comet's latest visit to our Earth's environs. The night before he was born while my daughter Krista was in labor, Noah's dad's mom and dad and I held vigil together back at Noah's first home.  Noah's dad was at the hospital with Krista, of course.

Sometime in the night while sitting on the couch in the living room, I dozed off a bit and "saw" the scene of a party.  The room in the dream or vision was decorated just the way my sister and I used to dress up rooms for children's birthday parties when we were asked to help out with them by parents of kids we used to babysit.  There were balloons, banners and streamers; cake ice cream and candy; party hats and little stations where anyone who desired could play games from our childhood like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," "Drop the Clothes Pin in the Milk Bottle;" and entertainments from my kids' childhood with piñatas and VHS cartoons.  Children of all ages were there.  The adults stood or sat around chatting.  We all seemed to be enjoying one another immensely.

In the vision or dream everyone who is related to us, but already passed on was there.  The spirits of people we love who are still on Earth were there, too.  And in case you didn't guess already, the party was in celebration of Noah's trip to the Earthly part of his eternal life.  It seems to me that almost everyone looks like they are in their thirties in visions like that, but Noah seemed to be about eighteen -- and children and babies were there, too.  Noah was tall and slim like his dad, and had twinkles in his eyes. 

As the party-goers celebrated with Noah, at one point he turned to me and said, "Gramma, we are going to have SO MUCH FUN!"

And we have!  

I told Noah's other grandma and grandpa about the dream or vision when we got the call to go to the hospital to meet Noah in person.

It's not anything I ever told the ordination board when I was first starting out as a pastor, though. 

*twinkle*

In the fall of '99 when I first started writing the "Drinks of Living Waters" devotions, I wrote a lot about Noah because I was blessed to be able to spend chunks of time with him.
I was also blessed to be able to baptize him in one of the churches I served in the Three-Point Jefferson Charge near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  Noah and his parents were presented to the other two churches, too, and the parishioners were so very kind to celebrate his life and baptism with us.

My Dad's father was a Methodist minister ordained in England.  After he, my grandmother, two of my dad's sisters and many other relatives emigrated to Canada and the US from the Birmingham, England suburb of Walsall, Grandpa served churches while also building houses.  He baptized my older cousins, my brother and me, and one or two cousins born in my year group before passing away when I was fifteen months old.  We were blessed.

And my kids' Dad's father was mostly Cherokee, the son of a Methodist pastor in rural Alabama.  After a career in the U.S. Army that began during the Korean Conflict, included helping to run the railroads in occupied Japan (where he met and married my kids' Japanese grandmother) and jungle training recruits when the U.S. supposedly only had advisors in Southeast Asia, he became a pastor in the Central Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church.

So my kids' Grandpa Tom baptized them, too.  Such a blessing!

Therefore, when I celebrated the baptism of Noah, he was the first of the third generation of babies in our family to be baptized by a pastor grandparent.

God is so good and so faithful.  If you feel led, please pray for Noah, for Krista, and for all of us.  The Lord knows our needs and His good plans.

Hope you are aware of your blessings today, Beloved.  And I trust that if you have burdens, worries, fears or doubts that you will lay them down at the foot of the Cross and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you.

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