The Gift
On the day before my seventh birthday, my grandmother presented me with a white, leather-bound bible
that had my named engraved in silver on the cover. She told me she had saved her money over the course of
several years to buy that book for me. It took years, because it was an expensive purchase for her small pocketbook.
Even though I couldn't understand many of the words, I was mesmerized by the pure beautify of it: the shiny silver zipper, the smell of the print on the thin pages and the striking red letters toward the back of the book--the New Testament. I'd sit at the dining room table, my head just above my book, legs swinging from my chair, as I poured over the pages wishing I could stuff all those red words into my brain to get closer to God. I went to Sunday school with my classmates and to church with my family. In those days, you weren't shuffled off to a back-of-the-church day care during the service. You were expected to sit quietly in the hard pew and listen to what the minister had to say. In my child's heart, I knew who had spoken those red-letter words from my new Bible: Jesus, the Son of God.
My Sunday school teacher was Mrs. Ghilain. She was a tiny, elderly woman with white hair. I thought to myself that if there were angels on earth, Mrs. Ghilain was surely one of them. She never raised her voice to reprimand my seven and eight-year-old counterparts. She quietly spoke their names, and they listened. Every Sunday morning she would hand out small, rectangular pieces of white paper on which she had hand-written different scripture references. Each child was given a verse or two and expected to look them up and read them out loud to the group. It didn't matter if you couldn't pronounce a word or two. Mrs. Ghilain would patiently help us sound out the syllables and then explain what each word meant in the context of the verse. We all sat quietly and studiously tried to understand what God, and Mrs. Ghilain, wanted us to know: God loved us. Every Sunday I'd save my little, white scraps of paper within the pages of my white Bible and return the next week to obtain another one.
My grandmother and Mrs. Ghilain have long since left this earth, but the gifts they gave me are still with me. On Sundays,
I carry my white, zippered, leather-bound Bible to church. It's not as white as it used to be, and the zipper doesn't work so well,
but the red words within it are the same. Over the course of 41 years, across many miles and moves to and from three different
states, I managed to save 37 of Mrs. Ghilains pieces of paper that contain 41 scripture references in her handwriting. The papers
are yellowing, but the ink and pencil lines listing each scripture verse are as bold as ever.
I don't know what possessed a seven-year-old in 1967 to save bible verse references on small scraps of paper in perpetuity. Perhaps the same thing that possessed one adult to entrust a child with an expensive Bible she couldn't quite read, and another to entrust a group of small children with bible verses that were bigger than they could even begin to fully understand: Faith. The adults in my life had faith that giving young people the opportunity to understand God's love for the world was the right thing to do for the world.
I pulled the pieces of paper out to touch them all again this weekend. As I was sorting out the references by book, I noticed that the same reference was listed on four separate pieces of paper:
Matt. 28: 19-20
"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Obviously, Mrs. Ghilain felt these verses to be of utmost importance if she wrote them down and gave them to us at least four times. I was struck by the appropriateness of the words as they spoke to this point in time, for me personally, for our nation and for the world. For Christians, it is a crucial time in history. If you haven't been paying attention, "Christianity" is fast becoming a bad word in America. "Multiculturalism" has become the accepted replacement. Our American Judeo-Christian society is becoming more and more secular, and our current government leaders, under the guise of separating church and state for our own good, are slowly chopping away at our religious freedom (not to mention our financial and personal freedoms). Grandmothers don't give bibles to their seven-year-old grandchildren. Adults don't send their seven-year-olds to Sunday school. And we wonder why our nation (and the world) is in such disarray as a new liberal, pluralist democracy builds the foundations for the politically correct religion of "Secularism." In other words, more Americans believe whole heartedly, and with a very religious zeal, that "Nothing created Everything." And they are preaching and professing their belief in Nothing to anyone who will listen.
In the face of those who self-righteously proclaim that Christians are "hateful" and that Christianity is "exclusive," we cannot cower to those lies or take a back seat to that kind of evil. Christians are the most loving and inclusive people in the world. They feed the hungry, tend to the sick and give hope to those who have none. One recent case and point: When Henrietta Hughes, a homeless woman who lost her home to foreclosure in 2003, asked for Barack Obama's help during a February 2009 Obama town hall meeting in Fort Myers, Obama's team handed her a business card and told her to go see a local community service office. Chene Thompson, who is a Christian and wife of Florida Representative Nick Thompson, offered Hughes and her sons the use of a second home that they were trying to sell or rent. Thompson saw a need and filled it without pause.
As fewer Americans freely believe in the Christian doctrine of loving and giving (because they are being brainwashed into believing that Christianity is stupid and hateful), and are forced to "love and give" by the strong arm of government, more Americans will come to rely on government resources to fill very personal needs--needs that should be met by the individual. Eventually, government funding of personal needs will bankrupt the nation. The secularist argument is greatly flawed; Judeo-Christian principles are inherent to America's success, not its failure. The undoing of those principles will be the undoing of America.
We need to have the believing hearts of children and a bold and unwavering adult faith. Pray for our nation. Share the Truth of our loving God. Be fearless in the Truth of our loving God. LIVE the Truth of our loving God. Be a grand example by moving forward in all that God commands us to do. We need to Keep God in America by sharing his message of love, goodness and eternal life. If we can keep our faith in the face of the adversity that exists and the adversity that is to come, God will be with us, "always, and to the end of the age." We have His promise.
I am thankful for the many great gifts I've received in my lifetime as an American, and especially for my grandmother and Mrs. Ghilain, true Americans who gave me the one Gift, the only Gift, that matters: The Loving Word of God our Creator.
###
Even though I couldn't understand many of the words, I was mesmerized by the pure beautify of it: the shiny silver zipper, the smell of the print on the thin pages and the striking red letters toward the back of the book--the New Testament. I'd sit at the dining room table, my head just above my book, legs swinging from my chair, as I poured over the pages wishing I could stuff all those red words into my brain to get closer to God. I went to Sunday school with my classmates and to church with my family. In those days, you weren't shuffled off to a back-of-the-church day care during the service. You were expected to sit quietly in the hard pew and listen to what the minister had to say. In my child's heart, I knew who had spoken those red-letter words from my new Bible: Jesus, the Son of God.
My Sunday school teacher was Mrs. Ghilain. She was a tiny, elderly woman with white hair. I thought to myself that if there were angels on earth, Mrs. Ghilain was surely one of them. She never raised her voice to reprimand my seven and eight-year-old counterparts. She quietly spoke their names, and they listened. Every Sunday morning she would hand out small, rectangular pieces of white paper on which she had hand-written different scripture references. Each child was given a verse or two and expected to look them up and read them out loud to the group. It didn't matter if you couldn't pronounce a word or two. Mrs. Ghilain would patiently help us sound out the syllables and then explain what each word meant in the context of the verse. We all sat quietly and studiously tried to understand what God, and Mrs. Ghilain, wanted us to know: God loved us. Every Sunday I'd save my little, white scraps of paper within the pages of my white Bible and return the next week to obtain another one.
My grandmother and Mrs. Ghilain have long since left this earth, but the gifts they gave me are still with me. On Sundays,
I carry my white, zippered, leather-bound Bible to church. It's not as white as it used to be, and the zipper doesn't work so well,
but the red words within it are the same. Over the course of 41 years, across many miles and moves to and from three different
states, I managed to save 37 of Mrs. Ghilains pieces of paper that contain 41 scripture references in her handwriting. The papers
are yellowing, but the ink and pencil lines listing each scripture verse are as bold as ever.
I don't know what possessed a seven-year-old in 1967 to save bible verse references on small scraps of paper in perpetuity. Perhaps the same thing that possessed one adult to entrust a child with an expensive Bible she couldn't quite read, and another to entrust a group of small children with bible verses that were bigger than they could even begin to fully understand: Faith. The adults in my life had faith that giving young people the opportunity to understand God's love for the world was the right thing to do for the world.
I pulled the pieces of paper out to touch them all again this weekend. As I was sorting out the references by book, I noticed that the same reference was listed on four separate pieces of paper:
Matt. 28: 19-20
"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Obviously, Mrs. Ghilain felt these verses to be of utmost importance if she wrote them down and gave them to us at least four times. I was struck by the appropriateness of the words as they spoke to this point in time, for me personally, for our nation and for the world. For Christians, it is a crucial time in history. If you haven't been paying attention, "Christianity" is fast becoming a bad word in America. "Multiculturalism" has become the accepted replacement. Our American Judeo-Christian society is becoming more and more secular, and our current government leaders, under the guise of separating church and state for our own good, are slowly chopping away at our religious freedom (not to mention our financial and personal freedoms). Grandmothers don't give bibles to their seven-year-old grandchildren. Adults don't send their seven-year-olds to Sunday school. And we wonder why our nation (and the world) is in such disarray as a new liberal, pluralist democracy builds the foundations for the politically correct religion of "Secularism." In other words, more Americans believe whole heartedly, and with a very religious zeal, that "Nothing created Everything." And they are preaching and professing their belief in Nothing to anyone who will listen.
In the face of those who self-righteously proclaim that Christians are "hateful" and that Christianity is "exclusive," we cannot cower to those lies or take a back seat to that kind of evil. Christians are the most loving and inclusive people in the world. They feed the hungry, tend to the sick and give hope to those who have none. One recent case and point: When Henrietta Hughes, a homeless woman who lost her home to foreclosure in 2003, asked for Barack Obama's help during a February 2009 Obama town hall meeting in Fort Myers, Obama's team handed her a business card and told her to go see a local community service office. Chene Thompson, who is a Christian and wife of Florida Representative Nick Thompson, offered Hughes and her sons the use of a second home that they were trying to sell or rent. Thompson saw a need and filled it without pause.
As fewer Americans freely believe in the Christian doctrine of loving and giving (because they are being brainwashed into believing that Christianity is stupid and hateful), and are forced to "love and give" by the strong arm of government, more Americans will come to rely on government resources to fill very personal needs--needs that should be met by the individual. Eventually, government funding of personal needs will bankrupt the nation. The secularist argument is greatly flawed; Judeo-Christian principles are inherent to America's success, not its failure. The undoing of those principles will be the undoing of America.
We need to have the believing hearts of children and a bold and unwavering adult faith. Pray for our nation. Share the Truth of our loving God. Be fearless in the Truth of our loving God. LIVE the Truth of our loving God. Be a grand example by moving forward in all that God commands us to do. We need to Keep God in America by sharing his message of love, goodness and eternal life. If we can keep our faith in the face of the adversity that exists and the adversity that is to come, God will be with us, "always, and to the end of the age." We have His promise.
I am thankful for the many great gifts I've received in my lifetime as an American, and especially for my grandmother and Mrs. Ghilain, true Americans who gave me the one Gift, the only Gift, that matters: The Loving Word of God our Creator.
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