Refined grace
We say good
bye to Geneva Hartman today with a service at the funeral home.
She died Monday after a bout with cancer. She was 87.
Some of you will not know her. She has not been able to be active in the church for several years.
She remained very active in the lives of those she loved, in the life of her family.
Now, Geneva never married and had no children.
She was not “great” in the sense of being famous and well known.
She was, however, a person who did small things in great ways.
She worked over 50 years as a bookkeeper at the Bourbon Laundry on Seventh Street which is now closed.
When they closed that ended her career in her late seventies.
Her fierce loyalty to her family was evident in her willingness to transport her great nieces and nephews to and from school, band practice and other events, when their parents had to work. She attended their band competitions.
I would see that little blue Pontiac going back and forth on Cypress Street many, many times through the years. It was full of kids every time. Every day. Steady. Regular. And these were great nieces and nephews.
She took in many family members to live with her through the years, even in her advanced years when she could have easily justified not doing so.
She was steadfast. A rock. A giver with an over-and-above quality in her giving.
She was sharp. Nothing got past her. And yet she was compassionate and loving.
The only way I can adequately describe this is that she was a woman of refined grace; refined through the life of the living Christ. She wove that grace into the fabric of her life. It was tough, resilient grace.
In her room at Hospice Care, three of us joined hands and prayed. Right after the prayer she died. God has now applied the final layer of his grace to a woman who embodied the meaning of grace throughout her life.
Moving to the deeper places,
Jeff