Lina's three sisters became priests wives --- as the custom prescribed. Her brother became a priest -- as the custom also prescribed. Lina, on the other hand, had heard from the moment she was little: "You, who are in such bad health, you can never become a priest's wife. You must stay home and look after us as we grow old."

Lina was often asked to come to her sisters, when they needed her help because they were ill in TB or would give birth to children. Lina set up as well as she managed, but that was not what she really wanted. She felt that her task was to write.

 

At one point, when everything felt awkward and she didn't feel so good herself, she wrote the song "Lord with power from the Height clothe me". The song is a prayer about the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is the content of the first and second verses:

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Lord, with power from  the Height, clothe me,

I am so powerless and weak in myself.

Don't let me go where you can't go with me,

lead me to the river of grace and truth.

 

Quench my thirst with the living water

of which the world does not know the least.

Be me a shiny pillar of fire at night,

be me a pillar of cloud when the day is hot.

Tr. U.F.

 

The twin-flower is Smaland's landscape flower. I read about the twin-flower in a book about flower language. It said: "You love it and have the greatest admiration not only for its external attachment but also for the beauty of the soul."

 

I think this fits in well with Lina. She was a good representative of her landscape, Smaland, and I think she really had the beauty of the soul. A couple of proverbs that also fit in well with Lina in this context are: "That heart is full of, mouth speaks" and "A good man carries good gifts out of his good store". Lina knew where the Store was, and there she returned often and gladly - to the blessing of both herself and others. The twin-flower's open V-shape also recalls Lina's way of being open to receive power from God. It was the power of the Holy Spirit on which she was always dependent.

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Just above the twin-flower in the picture foreground you can see the symbol of the Holy Spirit: a straight-down dove with a cross glory in its beak. If you follow the contours along a piece of the wings' outside and the head, the shape is quite similar to the twin-flower's open shape. One can imagine that the dove / the Holy Spirit descends and fills Lina with his power.

 

"Quench my thirst with the living water ..." is illustrated by the running stream.

 

Power from the height, Lina would need very much an early summer morning on July 24, 1858. Her father and she would go by boat to Gothenburg, first over Lake Vetter and then on the Göta Canal. They had only gotten a bit out on Lake Vetter, when a violent thunderstorm made Jonas Sandell lose the balance and he fell overboard. Completely shocked, Lina saw his white-haired head glimpse between the waves as he tried to stay up by swimming. Before the boat was able to stop and back, he had drowned! His body floated ashore a few days later near Motala.

 

Lina was petrified. It felt as if she would not be able to live on. She tried to process the grief by "writing off". A good friend reminded her of the power and comfort of the name of Jesus. Lina wrote in the diary: "My father and I have been so close to each other for many years. A great void has arisen, only Jesus can fill it."

In a song, written after her father's death, it says:

Y o u r  n a m e is a poured ointment, which cures
And stills and heals my wounded soul.
Y o u r  n a m e  is my strength, when strength fails me,
Y o u r  n a m e  is my refuge in woe and in well.

 

Y o u r  n a m e  has proven even on my heart
The life force that is hidden therein,
And quieted my anxiety and relieved my pain
And from the terror of death set me free.

Tr. U.F.