The World's Largest Cuckoo Clock--When Will It Chime for Me?

 Another acquaintance of Jonathan's just went to her eternal reward this evening--Ruth Saine, a lady who played baritone horn along with Jonathan in the band of People's Bible College long years ago. She was aunt to Tillman Nelson's wife, and never married, Jonathan says. As one by one our old friends, acquaintances and even family members are called away, it leaves us wondering who will be next and when it will be our turn.

On our way to the Columbus, Ohio, airport in October, after the news of Jonathan's mother being in the hospital reached us, we had an hour or so to spend in Sugar Creek, where we had seen that the World's largest cuckoo clock was.

It was an Ohio historical marker. The Alpine Alpa restaurant in Wilmot, OH, commissioned clockmaker Karl Schleutermann to build it in 1963. It took 12 years and $30,000.

It was featured on the cover of the Guiness Book of World Records in 1978. The clock was moved to Sugar Creek later and restored.

Jonathan hunted in a bakery nearby for a piece of elderberry pie that I was longing for, (and found one!) while I chose a package of sympathy cards at a Mennonite book shop across the street from this clock. Little did we know that one and a half weeks later, sympathy cards would begin coming our way.

We got pictures of an Amish school with a bunch of bicycles parked out by the road...and didn't know that two weeks later we'd be helping with Mama Lucas's obituary and finding out that she never learned to ride a bicycle. She rode a pony instead!

We passed an Amish home with clothesline full, and didn't know that Mama would never hang clothes in her back yard on her Amish-style clothes line again.

We spent a brief 15 or so minutes in a little museum where there was this ancient voting booth in a corner of a display--and didn't know that Mama had voted for the last time!

 

We looked at this unicycle and some sort of megaphone--and didn't know that the trumpet was about to blow for Mama.

For Jonathan's mom, there would be no more voting, no more hanging clothes on the line, and no more talk about school days.  

The World's Largest Cuckoo Clock had chimed for her.

Heaven had called her name. 

And she had slipped away.

Jesus, I do not know when my name will be called. I've spent most of my life with a sort of gnawing worry about that time in the back of my mind.

Would I be ready?

Would I miss being ready somehow?

This week, I decided something. I decided to stop asking God if I am ready.

Instead, since I have given Him my heart and never taken it back, I will simply trust Him that I am ready--and assume that He will let me know if there is anything I need to take care of.

Simply trust Him that His blood covers all my sins and that He will take my hand when the World's Largest Cuckoo clock chimes for me.