Father's House

                                                              Pryor Institute: 1887-1910

Marion County High School: 1910-1967

Jasper, Tennessee

            In the late 1880s, Washington and Jackson Pryor, along with A. L. Spears, gave land and money to construct Pryor Institute. The story’s told that the Pryor family built this local college so that their children could be educated close to home. In 1910, the Marion County High School Commission purchased the building from the trustees of the Pryor Institute and established the county’s first public high school. Unfortunately, in 1967, the beautiful landmark was torn down. (After graduating from Marion County High School in 1916, my grandmother received her first teaching assignment: a one-room, eight grade schoolhouse nestled in those picturesque mountains of east Tennessee.)

            In John 14:2-3, Jesus told His disciples, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places…for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also (forever).”

            “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven” (2 Cor. 5:1).

            “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16-18).

Come and go with me to my Father's house.


It's a big, big house with lots and lots of room.


A big, big table with lots and lots of food.


A big, big yard where we can play football.


A big, big house, it's my Father's house.¹

¹ “My Father’s House” by Newsboys

           

              (Grandmother’s story is retold in The Schoolhouse; available online at Amazon.com)         

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Incline of Life

          At the base of the mountain sat an incline tram with bucket seats to carry miners up to the coal mines and small cars with benches for other passengers. The stable owner told me the incline was dangerous and very few people risked taking it, especially women.¹ 

            This photograph of that very tram, the Whitwell Mine Incline in Marion County, Tennessee,  was taken on October 1, 1886 - one hundred twenty-six years ago! If you study the picture carefully, you will see a gentleman on the left beside the signal house, four men on the tracks, and another coal miner standing in the distance on the hill to the right – six men who lived life on this ol’ earth and then stepped into eternity.

            Did they know Jesus Christ? Did they fulfill God’s purposes in their own generation? Did they hear from the Master, “Well done, good and faithful servant or depart from Me, I never knew you?”

            It's now our time to ride the incline of life for "He made from one man every nation of mankind, to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation" (Acts 17:26 NASB).

            “So be careful how you act…Don’t be fools; be wise: make the most of every opportunity you have for doing good. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to find out and do whatever the Lord wants you to” (Ephesians 5:15-17 TLB).

¹   Jill Watson Glassco. The Schoolhouse (Peoria, AR: LifeHouse Publishing, 2012), 8.

 (The Schoolhouse is available online at Amazon.com)

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