‘What was it like when you were at school, Nanna?’ our youngest granddaughter asked me recently. Apparently, her Year Two school work that day involved talking to ‘someone older’ about such things and she had chosen me.
‘Well, we had to be very quiet in class, otherwise we would get into trouble,’ I told her. ‘Sometimes, children would be hit a wooden ruler if they were naughty—or they might even get the cane! We had long, wooden desks, with holes for inkwells—we dipped our pens in ink to write in our copybooks.’
Maxine became quite animated then.
‘Nanna, did you write with a feather?’
I tried not to laugh, as I responded. No doubt she must have seen someone writing with a quill in a TV show or book.
‘Hmm, I’m not that old, but a pen and nib were a bit like a feather!’
So much was strange to her. How come we didn’t get driven to school and picked up afterwards? What did we wear? What did we have for lunch? The more she asked, the more those memories surfaced. ‘Canteen’ was called ‘tuckshop’ back then. No compulsory uniforms in primary school, but I wore a hat, gloves and black stockings at high school, in Brisbane’s stifling, summer weather. On it went—so different from now.
Later, I began to reflect on the positives as well as the negatives of those school years. In primary school, we learnt how to write that lovely Queensland cursive our grandchildren cannot read today. We recited our times tables. We were drilled in mental arithmetic. In English, we did analysis and parsing, so useful to me as a writer today. We marked towns and rivers on maps. All up, I am so grateful for that firm foundation laid in my education back then.
In my early years too, I went to piano lessons twice a week before school, where, as well as mastering pieces and practising sightreading for those scary exams, I learnt music theory. Again, all this laid such a good foundation for those many times in later years when I was suddenly given unfamiliar music to play at church or elsewhere.
As children, we were also sent to Sunday school, but I was fifteen before I came to experience the wonderful, close relationship God offers us. Over the years, my faith grew firmer, as I read Scripture and connected with other Christians. And by God’s grace, I came to experience more of God and more of the Spirit’s leading in my life, sometimes slowly and sometimes in big jumps. Yet in it all, for me, the bottom line was—and still is—that the Lord who called me into his family is himself my firm foundation, my rock, the cornerstone of my life. Without him, I am on shaky ground, like that man Jesus talked about who built his house on sand (Matthew 7:24-27).
Right now, in the midst of these strange, uncertain times, let’s remember who forms that firm foundation of our lives. Let’s remember that, whatever is happening around us, the Lord is always there and will never let us down. Let’s remember—and be so thankful.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. Psalm 18:2
Jo-Anne Berthelsen's Blog 