Tom's Message: "The Opening of a Curtain"
What a beautiful day!!
What a beautiful weekend to get a parking pass online (“What?!” Yeah. Sorry!) and head up to the Smokies!!
We always turn left at the main traffic light in Townsend and head towards Wears Valley and then go through Metcalf Bottoms toward Elkmont, our favorite place!
Just as soon as you pass the Great Smoky Mountains National Park sign and right before you makes it to the “Bottoms”, if you drive slow enough you’ll see a little parking lot…
(it’s so little you might not even need the pass!…but that’s just me saying that!)
If you park and walk down that little gravel path that becomes a trail, in a little over a mile, in that "holler" in the Smokies called “Little Greenbrier”, there’s an old log house.
Built in the 1870’s by cobbling together two log houses built in the 1830’s, you can just sit on the front porch with no one around and know that you are still and quiet in one of the most peaceful corners of the world.
They call it “the Walker sisters’ cabin” because of five unmarried sisters…
Margaret, Polly, Martha, Louisa, and Hettle…
who lived there together…
curing their own ham…
weaving their own fabric and sewing all their own (remarkably bright and stylish-ish) clothes…
spinning their own wool (like someone I know!)…
drying their own apples for stack cakes…
canning their own sauerkraut…
making their own soap…
harvesting their own honey…
and living by the adage, “Make do or do without!”
But as you dig a little deeper into the history of “Five Sisters Cove” in the Little Greenbrier, you know in your heart that many, many tears dropped on those boards of that porch.
The sisters’ dad, John was self-sufficient as all mountain farmers were…
Tho’ of him it was said that “he was better at more than most!”
But he had known what it meant to suffer for his faith and convictions. Opposed to American slavery and the fight to defend it, he enlisted for the Union, was captured and lost 100 pounds in a Confederate prison camp, saved from starvation only by the mercy of God and a kind hearted farmer who smuggled pumpkins for prisoners to eat.
He married his promised sweetheart, Margaret Jane and 11 kids grew in a home full of love.
But when hearts open the gate and invite Love to enter, Love’s companion, Sorrow comes along, arm-in-arm.
The boys had all married, a couple of them went to college in Sevierville but all of them moved away.
One of the four sons moved his family to Idaho.
Did they sob when they held each other and said, "Good-bye"?
Did he ever see Little Greenbrier again?
Did they all know in their hearts he never would?
Only one of the seven sisters married.
When folks asked the sisters’ only brother-in-law why the others never got a husband, he’d say, “Well, I reckon I’m the only one who had the courage to break into the family! Or maybe the rest of them gals got discouraged when they couldn’t get me and jus’ quit!”
There came a day when the sisters learned that they were going to have to give up the only home they had ever known and loved because the Little Greenbrier was going to be included in a new “national park”.
Broken hearted beyond words, Sister Louisa, a poet, found the words:
“There’s an old weather bettion house
That stands near a wood
With an orchard near by it
For almost one hundred years it has stood.
It was my home in infency
It sheltered me in youth
When I tell you I love it
I tell you the truth.
For years it has sheltered
By day and night
From the summer’s sun heat
And the cold winter blight.
But now the park commisioner
Comes all dressed up so gay
Saying this old house of yours
We must now take away
They coax, they wheedle
They fret, they bark,
Saying we have to have this place
For a National Park.
For us poor mountain people
They don’t have a care
But must a home for
The wolf and the bear
But many of us have a tltle
That is sure and will hold
To the City of Peace
Where the streets are pure gold
And no park Commissioner
Will ever dar
To desturbe or molest
Or take our home from us there.”
After protesting and contesting, the sisters were eventually allowed to remain in their Walkers Sisters cabin…
until one by one, they went to their hearts’ true home, leaving in turn the other sisters to grieve them until all were waiting to welcome the last sister…
Louisa alone in the cabin…
in 1964…
HOME!
The New Testament says that the sorrows that circle the world these past days…
and the moans of suffering that fill this week…
and all the days…
all the weeks…
are the groans of a coming…new birth! (Romans 8:22)
The new birth of a new world!
A world that will be when Jesus comes to reign in a world-wide (in fact, universe-wide!) Kingdom of Love!
The “Book of Revelation” in the Greek language is called the Book of the “Apocalypse”.
“Apocalypse” means “the opening of a curtain”.
One day, the sky will open like a curtain and Jesus will come and take over His world!
The one He created and died and rose again to own and rule!
And it will finally be the world it was always supposed to be but never has been!
Somehow, sometimes in movies, the “post-apocalyptic” world is the most devastating and depressing and hopeless place ever.
But the world after the curtain opens and the Savior appears, is going to be…
a world of Love!…
a world of color and light!…
a world of compassion!!…
A world of joy and freedom!!!
A world of welcome!!!
A world of "finally enough!" for everyone!!!
In fact, the other name for the coming world…
the post-apocalyptic world…
where Jesus will be King is…
Home!