It was our second last day in the Netherlands. We had been visiting family and driving around favourite and previously undiscovered attractions for two weeks. There was still one final visit – my last surviving aunty in Holland who had been married to my mother’s youngest brother.
My wife and I received an enthusiastic welcome. A cousin and her husband were also present and later a grandson arrived. After the pleasantries, coffee and cake there was a surprise, a box of books, letters, photos and other memorabilia that had been discovered in the house, that many years earlier, had been where my grandparents lived.
The story is amazing! The grandson (about 27) had been showing some relatives (two girls their 20s) around Rotterdam when they asked if they could see the place where their grandfather (my uncle) had been born. When they arrived, the grandson, being polite, knocked on the door of the house and asked the owner if minded if he took some photos of the girls in front of the house. “Not at all,” was the reply, “But maybe you can tell me if a box of material I found in the attic belongs to your family. I was about to take it to the Rotterdam archives.”
So, this is how these 80 to 90 year old treasures came back to the family. There was a wedding photo of my grandparents which included many other family members, letters from a nephew who was in a Spitfire squadron in Indonesia during the uprising in the late 1940s, pension slips, post cards, school books, books that had been presented by church and school to my aunts and uncles, and my favourite, a certificate belonging to my mother for completing her primary education at the “School met den Bijbel”.
This is particularly special because I have been involved in Christian Education in Australia all my adult life, as a parent, school board member, teacher, and now, grandparent. This certificate puts into perspective a history of family involvement in Christian Education. Even today, two of my daughters teach in Christian schools.
Psalm 78 speaks of telling our children God’s statutes, and “even the children yet to be born.” (v6) My mother as a 13-year-old had no idea of what the future would bring. There would be war and migration, but there were also children, grand children and great grandchildren who know God because God’s truth had been passed through the generations.
Driving away from my auntie that night, I had tears in my eyes and reflected how God’s Covenant promises work through generations; one generation passing on the truth to the next. This certificate also signifies the end of my mother’s formal education. She had to go to work to support her family in the years between the depression and the war. More importantly, it is a reminder to me of how faithful grandparents sent their daughter to a school that would support them in their parental task and, generations later, the impact is still felt.
Travels from Ur 