Ghost Town in the Sky

      Summer of 1964, my family vacationed in the Great Smoky Mountains with our dearest friends, the Igous. This old photograph includes our two families aboard the cabled-railway incline which transported tourists to “Ghost Town in the Sky”: a Wild West-themed amusement park perched high atop a mountain in beautiful Maggie Valley, North Carolina.

       Our parents, R.A., Arlene, Verna, and Winfred were of, what Tom Brokaw dubbed as, the greatest generation: children of the Great Depression, Warriors of World War II, and gentle, quiet housewives yet tough as nails. Three of those four have now been rescued from every evil of this ol’ world and escorted safely into God’s heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. 4:18). They fought the good fight, finished the course, and kept the faith (2 Tim. 4:7). One lone soldier stands his watch in faithful resolve, “pressing toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

“Let us, therefore…have this attitude…let us keep living by the same standard…For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Therefore…in this way stand firm in the Lord, my beloved” (Phil. 3:15-4:1).