What Mammaw Said - In The Sweet By And By

What Mammaw Said - In the Sweet By and By

MAMMAW WAS A GREAT cook who loved to prepare meals for her family. Meatloaf. Fried okra. Mashed potatoes. Icebox pie. (Why would anyone name a pie after an appliance?) One of my favorite memories is standing at her counter as she gave me strict instructions on how to mash the potatoes (by hand) without leaving lumps.

Mammaw’s house was a two-bedroom frame house with a good-size kitchen. But it was hot in the summer. She relied on a window-mounted watercooler, one of those early refrigerated air units that would occasionally spit water on you, to compete with her circa-1955 Tappan stove. It was hotter than you-know-what when she had all four burners and the oven going. And the woman didn’t know how to cook a meal without providing three or four side dishes.

But I don’t think it was the steam bath she endured from the heat of that kitchen that she enjoyed—I think it was the reflective time, the worship time she savored while stirring the beans. And this is what I would hear her singing as I ran through the back door to help set the table:

There’s a land that is fairer than day,

And by faith we can see it afar;

For the Father waits over the way

To prepare us a dwelling place there.

In the sweet by and by,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore;

In the sweet by and by,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore.^a

Mammaw’s philosophy was simple: our challenges on this earth—as ugly and hard as they sometimes are—are temporary. In the light of eternity, most things are not important at all.

Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. (Hebrews 10:23)

Girlfriends, in the sweet by and by it all works out. Our Father awaits us. Just keep stirrin’ your beans and let your walk of faith be the story your grandchildren share about you.

^a Sanford Bennett, “In the Sweet By and By,” 1868.