For the past several years, I have become an amateur sleuth, working to discover all that I can find in family genealogy. My maternal grandparents died when I was young and their children were scattered all over the country. I never had an opportunity to know any of them.
After my mother’s death, I started sorting through boxes of photos and letters that she had saved. I had a longing to “know” those people who had been important in her life. Mom always spoke with deep affection for her mother, but she had passed away when I was just five years old. I had never developed a relationship with her.
As I sorted through the photo boxes, I found a stack of yellowed notebook paper containing carefully handwritten letters. There were over 60 pages written from my grandmother to my newly married parents. My grandparents became Christians when they were in their 50s. My mother, the eighth child of eleven, was 16 years old and had no interest in church at that point in her life, nor did most of her siblings. However, my grandmother persistently and consistently wrote letters to each of her children. Those letters are full of scripture, teaching every aspect of the plan of salvation, the church, worship, and many other Bible topics.
Approximately seven years after my grandparents became Christians, my parents obeyed the gospel, as did five others of her ten living siblings. In time, my father became a Bible class teacher, deacon and elder. My sister and I married Christian men and raised our families to love the Lord.
My grandparents were simple people living on a farm in Missouri. My grandmother was not a public speaker or author, yet she had tremendous influence that she never lived to know! Once she knew the truth, she was desperate to share that truth with the ones she loved the most.
I look forward to meeting my grandmother one day in heaven. I want to say “thank you” for the profound influence that she had on my life. Without her and the words written to my parents, my life may have taken a very different direction. I am reminded of Hebrews 11:4 which says of Abel, “He being dead still speaks.”
Who do you want to thank for sharing the gospel with you?
(PS….My mother is the little blonde headed girl standing next to her mother.)
