Worship

 I have just written this on the Cafe Facebook page so thought I would add a bit and save it here.

My mothers step father was a preacher at a Pentecostal church in Richmond a suburb of Melbourne in Australia, and he usually preached only on Sunday nights, but the church was near the town hall that had a large clock that chimed the hour, it was very loud indeed, Mr E would watch the clock as he preached, not because he liked to keep his sermons short! But because a few seconds before 8 pm he would say in his very loud voice, are you ready to die, when the death Angel tolls the bell for you will you be ready? And at that precise moment the town hall clock would strike the hour. Of course this would scare any one who didn’t realise what was happening. The only sermon I ever had to listen to from him was one where his text was the joy of the Lord is your strength. He lived in our house and most unfortunately there was no joy of the lord in him, he was the most grumpy, bad mannered man I every had the misfortune to know. Fortunately my parents were different to him mum and dad were mostly very patient with his bad manners and disrespect for mum , so showed me the other side, of the joy of the Lord as he was her strength.

one day I came home from school to find that in the lounge room the old organ was not there, it had been left to mum by her mother, as it had been purchased for her by my mums father. It turned out that Mr E…. had sold it he said he didn’t like it so sold it and he kept the money , that was one time when mums patience got very thin, it upset her so much, to think he could do that.
I was nearly 7 when he left our house, he died, and his 4 very grown up sons who looked very rich and they were as they owned a chain of real estate agents on the other side of Melbourne, turned up to collect all his things, but by all his things they meant all the furniture and everything in the house, mum stood her ground as she had never seen them before they never visited their father nor did he visit any of them but when he died they wanted what they said was theirs. I was told years later that mum gave them his clothes his dirty linen and mattress, then told them to leave. But they wanted the lace mums mother had made, there was quite a lot of it, and them wanting it meant it must have had some monetary value. They didn’t get any of it as mum decided to tell them who some of her friends were, so she name dropped some very prominent people, including one high police official. They left..

About 18 months later mum and dad sold the house and we moved out of central Melbourne, when the new owners arrived to get the key, there was a big black umbrella still standing inside the front door, mum was reminded that it was there and to take it, her reply was, “No you can have it it belonged to my step father and where he has gone it is too hot to rain! “ And so we left the house that had so many good but a few bad memories.