I have started the last two Sundays by driving thirty miles through the country to take my mother-in-law to services at what used to be her home church. At ninety, she doesn’t have much control over her own life anymore. She makes her home in the spare rooms of her children. Florida in the winter, Missouri in the summer. And she has to plan all her activities (such as the hairdresser or the doctor and even her daily walks) around our schedules. She is sweet and gracious about this fact. Even about the irritation of not having full control of the thermostat. Although we try to compromise, she still freezes at our house. She wraps up in a blanket with a book, or a puzzle, or another afghan to crochet and smiles about it all.

The church we visited is in a town where she and I lived as next door neighbors for more than a decade. We shared a yard, a mailbox, a driveway, and a daily rhythm of life. Even then we didn’t go to the same church. My father-in-law used to say he raised all four of his children to be good Methodists, but not a one of them took. Though none of us sat in their pew as adults, we all live their faith. That is why it was easy for me to miss my own worship service and sit beside her singing the hymns of a heritage we share.

Her friends were overjoyed to see her and showered her with hugs and kisses. As we drove up the road for the second week she said, “I’m not expecting the same greeting I got last time. I’ll just be old-hat today.”

But, she was wrong. The church building itself seemed to smile when she walked in the door.

At the end of the service, we joined hands to sing a prayer. It was a struggle for her to stand and practically impossible for her to cross an aisle to complete the circle. She would have been content just to stand there and be a part. But a spunky teenager from the next row stepped up, stretched her arms wide, and grabbed my mother-in-law’s wrinkled hand. As we sang, I prayed that some of my mother-in-laws faithfulness would rub off on this girl. That she would stand someday, ninety years old, in a sanctuary where she, too, had prayed, sung, and served for a lifetime.

Lord, let it be.