A Much "Kneeded" Lesson

Not only am I a school teacher, I'm a preacher's wife.  A whole lot of  my understanding has come from this portion of my life.  My husband pastored a church in Natchitoches for 18 years.  What a wonderful place to grow-up!  (me, my husband, and our children) My husband has a very large contact base.  He knows people he doesn't even know he knows.  Everywhere we go he introduces me to someone, famous - lowly, it matters not to him their station in life.  He is an exceptional person.  As such, he takes pleasure in introducing others to people that can broaden their horizons and such.  At that little church, oh the people he brought in.  For one particular week he brought in a "team" of people from big cities in La.  and Texas.  These people were leading us in classes for the children, ladies, men and then as a large group.  They were published authors, big time speakers..."important" people.  One of the members of that church was a "90"  (some say she was a lot older) year old American Indian, Ma Brown.   One afternoon before the evening service, Ken asked me to take two of the visiting women around to some of our people to introduce them and invite our people to take part.  One of the people he asked us to visit was Ma Brown.  Ma Brown chose to live in a shack.  I say she chose this because the church had bought a house for her to move into that would have been "more comfortable" but she chose her home.  This home of Ma Brown's literally had cracks in the walls and floors that she covered with tar paper & newspaper.  You could still feel the wind blow through.  She dressed to match this, several layers of thick old clothes, that were very worn and dirty.  She did not live with the modern conveniences.  Ma Brown always had a dip of tobacco in her mouth; that evening she sat in her rocker and spit through the cracks in the floor as she visited with us in her one room shack.  We did not sit down.  There did not seem to be a "clean" place to sit and there we were dressed for church (hose & dresses) in all our glory.  When it was time to go, I told Ma Brown it was nice to visit with her and we hoped to see her in church.  She looked at me and said, "What you ain't gonna pray with me before you go?"  We all replied, "Oh yes mam, we'll pray."  Ma Brown scrambled out of her rocker to her knees as one of the pious three of us started to pray; she turned and almost shouted at us, "On your knees you sinners!"  Of  course all three of us dropped in our hose & dresses to a floor covered with grime but after Ma Brown prayed for us we got up a lot cleaner than we had been.  Lord thank you for the lessons learned on our knees and the pilgrim's journey through this life with your dear children.