Ann - Part I

Ann

It’s one thing to read about a person, it’s another thing to hear that person speak, it’s yet another thing to meet the person; but to know the person, well, to know the person is to recognize the person – not the person’s body or physical features mind you – but to know in some measure the person’s soul, the inner man or inner woman.

Yesterday evening Ann Nichols put off this earthly tent and was clothed with immortality. This was not a sudden thing with Ann; it was a way of life, this putting off and putting on, this being clothed with Christ. She knew that it was time for her to be “gathered to the fathers and mothers”, she knew that sometime ago – and she basked in the Presence of her Lord Jesus and the Father in this final earthly-season of mortal life – and I think it not blasphemy to write, “The person that saw Ann saw the Father.” Isn’t that, after all, our calling in Christ?

I don’t know how old Ann was in earth years, and as I ponder that it occurs to me that I never thought of chronological age when I thought of Ann because the light of eternity was glowing through her earthen vessel for as long as I knew her – and compared to others I didn’t know her long, twenty-one years – then in another sense I haven’t stopped knowing her, nor has anyone else who knew her; we continue to know her.

I suppose many folks who heard Ann’s testimony decades ago will remember her as, “The woman who laid hands on her daughter’s murderer and prayed for his salvation and healing while he lay in her home from self-inflicted wounds after killing her daughter in her presence.” Little wonder Ann was invited to share her testimony to groups in the Richmond area years ago – and yet, it isn’t the act of forgiveness and the act of praying in that incredible circumstance that has made the impression on me, though I will confess that initially I was drawn to the “act” just as many are; it is the person of Ann Nichols and the wedding of Ann to our Lord Jesus Christ that has produced a lasting influence in my life. To the observer this may seem strange in that I’ve seldom seen Ann in the flesh in the past fourteen years, and only once in the past four years – but to those who “know” Ann this is not strange, they recognize this as part of her legacy – for when the grace of God flows through a man or woman such as Ann it continues its working regardless of time or space.

To be continued…