Day two
In Norway generation Bibles are common. Every new member of the family branch was carefully written in on the front pages. Alas only the oldest son did inherit that family heirloom. After my dad there are to large Bibles, one for each child. What's more important we know we are inscribed in our Heavenly Father's big book, and that we thereby have his promise of "love to a thousand generations". ( Exodus 20:6)How great is that??
You may know that all the countries of Scandinavia have a Reformed Lutheran Church as the official churches in their countries. They are supported by the government and also taught in school. (82% of the Norwegians belong to the Church of Norway.) There have always been lay revivals within the church and I live in a part of Norway, which because of its pietism has been called "The Black Mainland".
What once was a safe and loving environment has slowly but steadily become secularized. I feel sorry about that, but still blessed because of my forefathers love of God , which is bringing love to a thousand generations.
I do not know a lot about my great grand parents' Christian life, but even more about my grandparents' personal choice to live with God.
Here's my grandmother Serina, a proud farmer's girl who went to high school and amongst others taught to make this bunad, national costume, herself. (The bunad was made in 1903 and our daughter Serina is the lucky owner of it now.)
My grandmother was a small, 4foot 9, but happy and skilled woman. First on the dance floor and last one to leave, she used to tell.
Then the great revival came and she came to think that a lot of her "old" life was a sin. To play a fiddle, an accordion, even to whistle was a sin. Whistling meant calling out for the devil one preacher had taught. She loved the church, her husband and her nine children, and by and by she learned to find loopholes in the too strict religion. She would play any game with her children as long as there were no ordinary cards (poker cards) involved. She would use Vaseline one her eyebrows and eyelids, vaseline couldn't possibly be a sin. On her elder days she loved a good perfume. "It's the elderly who need to dress up. The youths are dressed up by being themselves," she used to say.
My mother's parents married in 1910. She choose a Godly man, Christian, from a small farm in the inland. Together they raised 9 children for worse and for good in sickness and in health. My grandpa two periods crossed the pond, to work in Montana, making money to buy land in Norway.
He once lost his farm in the great deprssion, because he had guaranteed for a loan for an elder brother. The brother came to own two farms, my grandfather had to leave wife and 8 children behind, taking the eldest son with him over to Montana again.
My mother tell grandma wore no bitterness, but worked had to provide for her children. She did a lot of knitting both by hand and by machine and sold her products on the market in Stavanger. I still remember her knitting by hand, holding the work in her lap while reading in an open book laying upon the table. Every minute counted.
Even so she never lost her faith or her heavenly goal. She used to quote Exodus 20:3 "Thou shalt not have no other gods before me". She worried about her children being to focused on materialism and the evil god Mammon. Today we all can realize how much we have lost in the search for wealth and success instead of gathering treasures where rust does not corrupt.
Matthew 6 :19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,
20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The summer of 1951. Eight siblings gathered at my grandparents "new" farm. We spent some wonderful summers here and share beautiful memories. We often were about 20 adults and children gathered around the huge kitchen table. The ninth brother, Bjørn, is on the picture standing between my grandparents. He's wearing an American soldier uniform.
Three of my mother's siblings went to live in the USA, so I have a bunch of first cousins scattered over North America. My mother and my grandmother were the only ones never to visit the New World.
