May 3 – This Sunday was the Third Sunday after Easter. Altar & vestment colors are still white & gold and as spring has now sprung we had beautiful arrangements of spring flowers for the altar. Bishop Hartley based his sermon on the Gospel for the day, St. John 16.16, “Jesus said to his disciples, a little while and ye shall not see me and again a little while & ye shall see me because I go to the Father.” Here Jesus is trying to prepare his followers for His going away, His physical death, yet He will return to them. There will be separation followed by a renewed relationship and sorrow will be turned to joy. There will be new life in the spirit and even after physical death Jesus would be present with them. The Christian life is a process of passing through sorrow to joy.
The article last week about the 1918 flu epidemic got me to thinking about people I knew when I was growing up who had lost family members at that time. One couple I knew lived across the street from my Grandmother Kester on Maple Street, now renamed Henley Street, who had lost both of their children in the 1918 epidemic. They were William & Maybelle Aelem and I visited with them many times. Their older child was Everett, born in 1898 and in 1918 he was in the U.S. Army stationed at a fort in Kansas when the epidemic started & he died from it on February 25, 1918.
Later that year their daughter Alma, born in 1915, also came down with it. Mrs. Aelem told me the story of a dream she had while Alma was sick. In the dream she was sitting by an open window looking out on a beautiful landscape when Everitt (who was dead by this time) came walking across the lawn & spoke to her through the open window & said, “Don’t worry about Alma, I am going to take care of her.” At that point she woke from the dream, and shortly after that Alma died on October 21, 1918. Mrs. Aelem was convinced that Everitt’s spirit had communicated with her in that dream. The pulpit & altar at the Ava Methodist Church were given in memory of Mrs. Aelem.
