My mother was a godly woman. It was no accident. My parents got up early, and my father worked hard for long hours, so my mother would prepare a large breakfast for him. When he had gone to work, Mom would sit down at the kitchen table with a second cup of coffee and “prepare her Sunday school lesson.” She had about an hour before it was time to wake the three children for school. That in-depth study of the Bible changed her life.

For decades, my mother taught Sunday school in the small Baptist church in our small town. She began with elementary school children, and in her later years she taught adult Sunday school. I knew she often went to “mission circle” when I and the other children were at school. What I did not know was that she was a frequent speaker at these meetings and even in regional meetings of mission circles from other Baptist churches. She was humble and not one to publicize her achievements. But her role should not have been a surprise to me. She was a homemaker, but being a homemaker in those days meant that she did laundry with a wringer washing machine and clothesline, baked her own pies and cakes, and sewed clothes and canned food for her family. It was a demanding occupation rarely recognized today. I knew that Mom also found time to maintain strong relationships with friends, neighbors, and family members. And she maintained an extensive correspondence with distant missionaries, friends, and relatives. Unusual for her time, she had not only graduated from high school but also attended both teacher’s college and business college. She had worked as a teacher and an office worker before marrying my father in 1946.

My mother did not just read the Bible. She studied it. According to her notes, she also read many of the key Christian books of her time, some that she owned and many that she borrowed from the church library. She also read letters and reports from missionaries, and a variety of Christian and other magazines.

Mom was also somewhat of a packrat. After she died, we found among her possessions many of the “meditations” she had prepared for mission circle meetings and other occasions. I read them first as part of my own daily devotions. Then, I decided to collect and publish them in a book. The book, What Is God Able to Do? The Devotional Meditations of E. May Coggins, has now been published. It contains my mother’s meditations, presented mostly as they appeared in her notes, with occasionally a few words added to fill in the gaps.

Why do we pray? What is God able to do? Why is the Bible like a valentine? Is God alive? Can you sign up for immortality? What causes worry? What are you searching for? What do we see? What do you have in the house? Why hobbies? Do we sometimes get into a rut at Christmas? These are just some of the practical spiritual questions my mother addressed in this collection of biblical meditations. This volume offers insight into life, particularly Christian and church life, in a previous century. It might perhaps be considered an historical source document, maybe even an historical curiosity or a relic of a bygone era. For sure, my mother had a view of life that would be unusual today. Among the foundational beliefs flowing through these meditations are these insights:

            • Life is hard.

            • Faith is hard.

            • We are here on this earth to serve.

            • We can find God in everyday things and activities and in ordinary people.

It is true that these ideas now seem quaint and old-fashioned. But that is their power and importance. The meditations offer a corrective to our own modern biases. They contain wisdom and insights from a previous generation that can help us today, and in that sense they are as relevant today as they were in the last century, perhaps even more relevant.

History often focuses on the thoughts and acts of the great and powerful, while the life of ordinary people is forgotten. My mother was just an ordinary Christian speaking to other ordinary Christians in her small town church. And yet an ordinary Christian, a believer in an extraordinary God, can have a significant impact, perhaps an even greater impact simply because she is ordinary. Jesus’ first disciples were all ordinary men who had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). Gandalf, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterful trilogy The Lord of the Rings, said: “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I’ve found it is the small, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.” That is what this volume is all about—the thoughts of an ordinary woman, believing in an extraordinary God, encouraging other ordinary people to believe in the light and to devote themselves to simple acts of kindness and love.