SUNDAY: Bible Study - 9:00 AM | Worship - 10:00 AM | PM Worship - 6:00 PM WEDNESDAY: Bible Class - 7:00 PM ~ 8110 Signal Hill Road Manassas, Virginia | Office Phone: 703.368.2622

My grandma, Pauline Browning, passed Thursday, November 4th, 2004. She was soon to be 84. The situation required that we have her services on Saturday afternoon, and so many who were her friends were unaware she had passed at the time of her burial. Many of you knew her well, as she visited us frequently in Manassas, until ill health precluded travel. I had to say good bye to her so quickly, that I beg your indulgence today while I remember a little of her.

When she was young I am sure she reached five feet in height, but I was never around for those days. She was a tiny woman who loomed large in so many lives because of the force of her personality, and the intensity of her relationship with God. She always reminded me of the godly woman of Proverbs 31. That woman is praised for her domestic virtue, certainly. But she is multi-faceted. That woman is also praised for her business sense, the impact she has on her community, her role as a shaper and molder of lives. My grandma wore all those hats with flair as well. And so I have written my own version of Proverbs’ ideal woman in tribute to her. I’m sure you were blessed with a mom or a grandma much the same.

A godly grandmother, who can find? Her value is far above rubies. She does good and not evil all the days of her life.

She maintains a house impeccably clean and ordered.

She bakes better pies: apple, chocolate, coconut cream, lemon meringue, and pumpkin, than you have ever eaten anywhere – than you will ever eat again.

She has more books than anyone, and has read them, and has taught you to love reading, and how to best cruise the used bookshops.

She is the smallest person you know, and yet she has the largest personality, and the most formidable mind.

Wherever she goes – to work, to church, through the neighborhood – she is thoroughly and completely trusted.

She sleeps motionless, flat on her back so as to preserve the $10 hairdo she got on Friday, and does preserve it, but pays for another one next Friday anyway.

She is wise, often on the phone, or sitting in her front room listening, encouraging, and administering counsel.

She loves her nieces and nephews as if they were her own, loves her own more than life, and loves God most of all.

She makes you high fat/high carbohydrate breakfasts, and then worries about your weight.

She imagines the worst that could happen, and expects it to – and yet she is quick to open her heart, to forgive, and to laugh.

She rises early to pray and dwells in God’s word all day.

She cuts your hair, hems your pants, and buys you the best books and ties you own.

She is strong: stronger than cancer, stronger than heart attacks, stronger than strokes, stronger than a broken hip, stronger than a broken shoulder.

She wants, more than anything, to be pleasing to God.

Many others have done nobly, but you exceed them all.

Charm is deceitful, beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the product of her hands, let her works praise her in the gates.

 

This was the grandma I knew. Only recently did ill health take those qualities away, but that was only for a moment.

Only a moment.

Now she is herself again. And she is home.

Eternally home.

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8110 Signal Hill Road | Manassas, Virginia

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