Grandma’s Voice of Hope 3

Growing up I attended the same church as my grandmother, Normandy United Methodist Church in Centerville, Ohio. A service the church offered for a long time was a phone line called “Voices of Hope.” Church members would record new messages each week and anyone who needed to hear a voice of encouragement could call the number to listen. My grandmother was responsible for several weeks of messages and kept transcripts of six of them with her personal files.

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Week 3:

 

“This is a Voice of Hope from Normandy United Methodist Church. This is Peggy Straughen.

I continue to share my personal words of encouragement, posted on a small corner of my refrigerator door. Today they are words of promise and a statement of faith, which reads thus:

‘God sustains us with sufficient grace for all crises of our adult years.’

As a young person I thougth I would have it made when I reached middle age–problems of youth behind me, problems of age ahead of me. Was I ever wrong! I have come to realize that ‘living’ means problems. We move from one crisis to another–things like an adult child’s marital problems, a spouse’s health problems, aging parents, a mother with Alzheimer’s Disease. But I believe God does sustain me with sufficient grace for all the crises of my adult years.

Helen Steiner Rice put it this way:

When you’re troubled and worried and sick at heart
and your plans are upset and your world falls apart,
Remember God’s ready and waiting to share
the burden you find much to heavy to bear–
so with faith, let go and let God lead the way
Into a brighter and less troubled way.

Thank you for calling the Voices of Hope from Normandy United Methodist Church.”