Granny

My grandmother (my mom's mom), Granny, went home on Wednesday, November 24, 2008. She is no longer an alien and stranger in this world. She had been in a lot of pain and in declining health recently, so it wasn't a complete surprise that God took her home. I'm thankful to be confident that she knew Christ, and now knows him in a much greater way.

This Christmas will be different, but I'm not sure how yet. Every year, the Saturday after Christmas was spent at her house with her extended family. She was central to that whole get-together and it was right that she was honored. She will be missed by all of us.

In some ways, she played a part in my salvation that perhaps she never knew. As an 11-year-old, I went to Vacation Bible School several years at her church. One year I was invited by the pastor to pray a prayer, "asking Jesus into my heart" (an expression I've grown to dislike for its ambiguous message but more on that in a later post). I told Granny that I was now a Christian. Her response could be best described as "loving doubt". She was very kind but I could tell that she was concerned that I didn't understand what I had prayed. I'm sure she tried to explain to me the truth, but it was her response that stuck with me.

I tried for years to "act like a Christian", reading the Bible, trying to be good. That experience after VBS seemed to always come back to my mind, making me wonder what it was that I really did that day. It wasn't until 7 years later, between high school and college, that I really understood the gospel: that my good works meant nothing, that at was only by trusting in Christ's payment for my sins on the cross and repenting of my sins that I would be saved. It was after I realized all of this that I finally understood Granny's reaction...and I understood it to be one of real love.

She was concerned that I would someday be in heaven. Now she is there herself. I will miss her here on earth but these relatively short years we have here as aliens and strangers will go by fast.