Revisiting my mother’s Jesus

My mom’s been gone more than three years now. That’s long enough for me to have winnowed through most of her possessions, but not all.

There’s still some papers. I somehow have the cemetery lot deeds for literally everyone in the family — as if the land where they are buried might be repossessed at any moment. There’s also a plastic bin of delightful photos, the subjects of whom one cousin and I are likely the only ones still able to identify.

A small number of books — some of which are pictured above — rounds out the list.

The tome count is low because she had already purged her collection when she joined our household for her last 11 years. What works that remained when she died were several Bible commentaries she used for Sunday School teaching — which are big enough to use as free weights — and an eclectic collection of topical Bible studies and spiritual essays.

It’s the latter that has finally drawn my attention. Most were written between the 1960s and the early 1990s — many of them collected while my family was still living in California and the Jesus Movement was in full bloom.

Reading them — slowly and thoughtfully — has been an eye re-opener to say the least.

There are books by ministers who would now be fenced apart as Mainline Protestant or Evangelical — segments of Christianity now at such doctrinal odds that they could be preaching about two different Jesuses.

In the 1970s, however, I find it fascinating that pretty much everyone was writing about one Jesus. One who bears an uncanny resemblance to actual scripture.

Jesus as Redeemer, Friend of Sinners, Prince of Peace. Jesus as the indisputable Son of God, the Holy One of Israel. Jesus as the Lamb Who Was Slain. Jesus as the coming King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

I think these old pastors — Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal or whatever — got Jesus right. I think my mother got Jesus right. By the grace of God, I hope to, as well.

The books have helped me and so has, well, Jesus. That’s what Jesus’s heart is, after all — setting right whoever wants in on His forever plan.

You, I, perhaps all of us may have let my mother’s Jesus slip from our view. For a time. I sense a rumbling of return coming from several directions. This could happen. Restoration is His very way and He’s never lost sight of us.

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