“But those who miss me injure themselves.
All who hate me love death.”
In my mind, both of my grandmothers were the wisest people I knew. They gave up significant portions of their lives to shape me and to train me all during the everyday experiences of life. They were faithful to truth and loved the Bible. My maternal grandmother was a Bible scholar intently interpreting and applying God’s truth to her life. She created what must have been one of the first ever picture Bibles. Beginning in Genesis, she cut out sequential portions of Scripture, pasted them to a piece of notebook paper and then pasted illustrative comic book pictures adjacent to each portion. Archie and Betty became our image of Adam and Eve. You’ll have to imagine the rest because that’s all my aging memory can conjure up any more. She worked diligently to interest her grandchildren in the Word of God. In effect, she illustrated the wisdom of the Scriptures with both paper pictures and the picture of her life. She walked in the Wisdom she shared.
My paternal grandmother was also a woman of God who faithfully sought the wisdom of God’s Word. My memory of her as I would make my way to her house up the dirt road from the highway after my ‘arduous’ 2 mile walk home from school is seeing her sitting perfectly upright in her straight-backed wooden chair by the window watching for me as she read her black leather Bible by sunlight. This was the picture I saw most every day. She made me tea cakes and scrambled eggs, played checkers on poster board with buttons and sang hymns with me from the Baptist hymnal. She loved me and daily showed me Wisdom in simple, yet powerful ways.
Having lost my mother to cancer at age 5 and my dad to kidney failure and heart complications at age 8 these two grandmothers played larger than life roles in my search for truth, hope and faith. As I watched both of them center their lives around Christ, I began to see the power He had and the impact He made on their lives. It is humbling now to look back and realize that it was these two humble, gracious women who led me to find true Wisdom, the Lord Jesus Christ. They were wise in the ways that mattered and displayed this wisdom to me every time I was around them. Their love for Christ and His word were the salient traits of their lives.
Thank God there are still so many quiet, humble souls around us who display the life of Jesus and protect us from the injury that comes by missing Him. He is Wisdom. He is truly the difference between loving life and loving death. Don’t miss Him. Humbly help others find Him.
Ventanas 