My Moment

of

Comprehension

We went out by the way of the back porch screen door rusted from the winter storms past the pear tree into the garden past the strawberry patch and the red raspberry and currant bushes on down to the east orchard to the Queen Ann summer apple tree heavy with pink-striped summer apples, my widowed aunt and I.

It was an apple-picking day, and as my four-year-old feet ran over the tough, thick sod of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, under that apple tree my widowed aunt chose that moment to teach me about the wonder of life; for her husband, a doctor, had died and my mother had died and she (my widowed aunt) I understood had volunteered, to take me, and bring me up, and teach me.

That afternoon, an apple-picking day, the question she caused me to ask her . . . four-years-old . . . was “Who made God?” and her winsome answer to a child was “Nobody made God. He always was. He made you.” It was a bit much even then, but at that moment under the apple tree given a moment to think, that a four-year-old heart that has now beaten into its seventy-sixth year, comprehended, and accepted, and knew right then that to know God aright it would be safe, even if this Big Figure were taken from it, too, and it were to be all alone again.

Add to your faith knowledge.

I could never understand why my playmates did not understand, or believe, or want to learn about God, but rather poked fun at Him, and me. I could not understand it. Yet, they went through school, too, and on out into business, but the attitude of scorn persisted toward me even after the death of the Big Figure. What my friends called happiness was built on slander, and lies, and deceit to me. Even so, they prospered.

Add to your faith virtue.

Temptation came to me and no one covered the pits and I fell in. “Nobody ever made God. He always was. He made you.” And, I knew that He had made provision to forgive and cleanse my sin. God had a Son, that gave Himself for me that through His shed blood I might live. And, I have. The God that made me knows my agony, and grief, and sorrow, repentance, and faith, and gratitude, and love for Him.

Add to your faith brotherly kindness.

My feet are now standing on the sandy soil of Orlando , Florida . Gone is the heavy sod of Pennsylvania , youth, and the open pits, and I no longer look up through the leafy boughs of the Queen Ann summer apple tree, and pick the ripe pink-striped fruit for my widowed aunt . . . no, now I look up through the huge branches of live oak trees in my back yard, but into the same blue sky, and the comprehension is still there . . . “No one ever made God. He always was. He made you.”

I can look back to that apple-picking day with my widowed aunt and know that after she had waited and given me a moment to think, she knew that my four-year-old heart had comprehended and accepted the faith, and that, at that moment the faith had passed from my father’s generation to me. Then I knew why my father had lived.

God has not given me a four-year-old orphaned niece to bring up and teach, but may the comprehension that passed on to me that day pass to you, my dear reader, for all the darkness of the Earth cannot comprehend this, but there is this Light that shineth in the darkness. “No one ever made God. He always was. He made you.”

Estelle McGhee Cranmer

(1876-1955)

Estelle Margaret McGhee Siehoff

(1916-____)

Add to your faith virtue,

Knowledge, long suffering, and patience,

Brotherly kindness, and charity.

I leave you praying and I love you.

Estelle M. McGhee-Siehoff