April 5th, Granky Day: A Celebration of Life, Love, and Laughter
If everyone knew what a few of us do, April 5 would be a national holiday. We would call it “Granky Day.”
Granky Day would be a celebration of all the precious women who have lived holy lives, but refused to be “holier-than-thou.” It would be a day to celebrate a woman who exuded radiant beauty and modesty in equal parts. It would be a day to celebrate a woman whose femininity was only matched by her untiring work ethic. It would be a day to celebrate a woman whose laugh could make you laugh, even when the joke made no sense at all.
April 5th is my maternal Grandmother’s birthday. Her name is Nova Dean Henager. She would have been 84 this year had she not died a few years back. She celebrated in a place where they don’t mark birthdays because no one grows old. I celebrated in a quiet place in my soul, where I remembered how blessed I was to have such a guileless, beautiful person influence my life.
When she passed, one of my aunts asked me to write a piece for the commemorative brochure that would be given to all those attending her funeral. It was a great honor to me to be asked to do that.
Here is what I wrote…
And (Jesus) said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. ~Matthew 18:3
She was a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great grandmother. She was a pastor’s wife, counselor, teacher, and friend— especially to those who most needed a friend. Not many called her Nova or Nova Dean. A few called her Mrs. Henager. But everyone who knew her, who really knew her, called her Granky.
The world is full of wonderful grandmothers, grannies, and grandmas. But, as far as we know, there has only ever been one Granky.
What is a Granky? A Granky is a grandmother who never let the child inside her die. A Granky is a woman with an indomitable spirit, an insatiable thirst for godliness, and an untiring devotion to God, His church, and her family. A Granky tells her famous “monkey stories” to kids, while adults gather in the shadows to listen, laugh, and remember how good it feels to be a kid. A Granky makes the world’s greatest rolls (and cinnamon rolls).
A Granky loves Christmas and summer youth camps as much as any child. A Granky is a woman of timeless beauty and simple, childlike faith. A Granky may grow old, but she doesn’t have to “grow up.” She may grow tired…and fall asleep…
But when she finally does, she wakes, refreshed, forever youthful…in the arms of her Jesus.
Happy birthday to my Granky…and to every godly woman whose life and love is a legacy your children will always revere, thank you.
Happy Granky Day.
One Holy Moment: This Is My Body…Take, Eat
Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, has always been a holy and solemn event to me, thanks largely to my grandfather.
I would not say that Pastor Bill Henager (my mother’s father) and I had a good many bonding moments. Ours was not the kind of grandfather/grandson relationship that led to many fishing expeditions or trips to the ballpark. He was a pastor, sure, but he was a working man. If he was awake, he was probably working. And, let me tell you, he woke up mighty early. Consequently, if you got too close to him, he would likely put you to work, as well. So, as a kid I steered as clear of him as was humanly possible most of the time.
Big Granddad, as we Strother kids called him, had been a farmer before he became a minister. He grew things. He raised cattle. He knew how to grow it, breed it, pick it, pull it, skin it, clean it, and cook it up. He never quit on such things. He carried them right into the ministry with him.
One thing my grandfather did that made an early and lasting impression on me was he baked his own unleavened bread. While other churches served little squares (or wafers, if you were Catholic or Episcopal) that were mass-produced in some factory somewhere, the members of our little congregation were served broken, uneven, homemade bits of unleavened bread, lovingly prepared by our pastor.
There was something ominous to me about that. Holding that broken piece of cracker with its jagged edges and irregularities, while listening to my grandfather read a portion of the passion of my Christ and then read the story of the Last Supper, where Christ reiterated to his bewildered followers the awful suffering that awaited Him only hours thence, always brought tears to my eyes.
I felt as if I were taking Communion under the very shadow of that Cross.
I confess that I made a conscious effort not to take many of my grandfather’s ideas into my own ministry when I became a pastor. I did not see eye to eye with him on more than a few things. That didn’t mean I didn’t love and respect him. I did. I do. I always will.
One thing, however, I did want to continue was the way he put a holy emphasis on the Lord’s Supper. I wanted my people to feel what I had felt as a boy. So, when I took a church in east Texas, only an hour from where he was pastoring the last church he would serve before being called to his reward, I planned a Communion for our congregation and then a personal trip to Mount Pleasant. Easter was just a couple weeks away.
In my grandmother’s kitchen, where her famous rolls were made and where her even more famous monkey stories were often told, my grandfather and I bonded. The sweetest moment I ever had with him was the day he taught me to bake unleavened bread.
I will never forget that Communion the following week. Easter was only days away. I stood behind the communion table. The deacons had served the people the bread and the cup. I read a portion of the story of the Last Supper, and then I picked up a rather large, uneven piece of bread from the silver tray on which it lay and snapped it in two. In the holy hush that had settled over us, that breaking of the bread could be heard all over the sanctuary.
I remember the way this one kid sitting near the front winced when the bread snapped in my hands. I remember hoping that holy moment would stay with him the way those moments from so many years before had stuck with me.
And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. ~1 Corinthians 11:23-25
Broken. His body. Broken. For me. For you.
Merle Haggard, Barack Obama, Rainbow Stew, Utopia, and Easter
Eatin’ rainbow stew in a silver spoon,
Underneath that sky of blue.
We’ll all be drinkin’ free bubble-ubb,
An’ eatin’ that rainbow stew.
Not quite, Merle
Reading the news —and the divergent opinions— regarding health care reform and the general direction of the country, that old Merle Haggard tune came to mind. It reminded me to beware the governmental promise of Utopia.
For millennia, across oceans, on every continent, mankind has sought the best way to build a peaceful and prosperous life for himself. Every form of government imaginable has been tried, from despotism to theocratic monarchies to communism to democracy. Some have gone better than others; but none has been perfect. Each has been marred by failure. Most have trudged down a rough road to ultimate collapse and oblivion— a road paved with good intentions, high hopes, and empty promises.
America now stands at a crossroads. Two very different groups— each pointing in the opposite direction— say they know the way. If we will just believe, behave, and follow, we will find joy, peace, and prosperity. While I decidedly favor one group’s ideals over the other, I do not believe that either will lead us to a place free of conflict and crisis.
As much as I revere the men who founded and shaped America— men of vision, insight, and utter greatness; men with names like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Washington— I do not place my ultimate hope for peace and meaning to my life even in the document they forged or the legacy they left.
As great as I believe the United States Constitution to be, there is a collection of writings as superior to it as the heavens are high above the earth. It is the Book that influenced the lives of most of those men so profoundly as to impact the kind of nation they envisioned, the kind of government they desired, the kind of freedom for which they yearned.
As we approach the event that separates the Founder of Christianity from every other religious leader the world has known, I am reminded that real peace only comes through and from the Prince of peace and true prosperity is measured by eternal measures and not temporal.
Nations rise and crumble. Governments come and go. Mouths that declare their own wisdom today are silenced tomorrow.
But Jesus lives…and because He does, hope and love will never die. And that reminds me of another tune…
Happy Easter.
This Too Shall Pass…But How?
Disclaimer: If you are a Christian weak in the faith or easily swayed by the brutal honesty of a man you might ordinarily expect to encourage and uplift you by handing you a pair of rose-tinted glasses and calling them “Faith,” then please…read no further. This is a blog and a blog is a journey. The journeyer sometimes knows where he is going and sometimes he doesn’t even know where he is coming from. So, read at your own risk.
Mark this under the heading, “Things I Would Have Told You Then, But Didn’t Know Until Now. Sorry About That.”
I remember repeating from the pulpit the oft-told story about the woman who testified in prayer meeting, “Whenever I have any trouble, I open my Bible and read. It isn’t very long before I see the words, ‘And it came to pass.’ That’s when I close my Bible and say, ‘Thank God it didn’t come to stay. It came to pass.’”
Don't come unraveled
I told that story, as did ten thousand other preachers, to encourage people not to whine too much about their troubles, not to fret overmuch about hardships. We reasoned that these things are temporary. They pass. You know, the ol’ “Tough times never last; tough people do” kind of speech. Probably we wanted to encourage folks who were going through bad times. Or, maybe we just wearied of listening to their incessant bitching.
In any case, we weren’t lying. Troubles are temporary. Tough times usually don’t last. God is good. This little bit of suffering is nothing compared to eternal bliss. All that. True enough.
But we might have left a couple of things out, probably because we just didn’t know better.
“This, too, shall pass.” We know that. What else do we need to know?
First, how will it pass? Will it recede quietly into the night, just slip away while you sleep, maybe leave an “I’m Sorry” note and a chocolate on your pillow? Will you wake tomorrow and the problem just packed its bags and left somewhere in the night?
Not likely. It is more apt to pass the way a kidney stone does, with its jagged edges wreaking havoc, buckling your knees, tearing through you like Quantrill’s Raiders. It may leave you (euphemistically speaking, of course) pissing blood for days after it’s departure. But at least it will be gone and you should feel better soon.
Second consideration is this: why does it pass? Maybe it is like the joke about how big the mosquitoes are in Houston. A guy said he overheard two mosquitoes discussing whether to eat him right there on the spot or cart him off somewhere before the big mosquitoes showed up and took him from them. Maybe that is why that little heartache, setback, bump in the road passed.
Maybe when your trouble left, it was just getting out of the way of what’s coming.
I know this line of reasoning is pessimistic, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be true. It can be. It might be.
Are you ready to deal with that?
Yesterday was a horrible day at my house. There was tension, disagreements, problems to solve, issues to resolve. At the end of the day, my wife climbed into my beautiful, silver Dodge Ram pickup truck. I was picking her up from work.
She shook her head and let out a cleansing little sigh, saying, “What a day, huh?”
“Yeah. Thank God it is just about over,” says me.
At 6:30 this morning, I went to start that same truck to let its engine warm. It wasn’t where I left it. It wasn’t anywhere close to where I left it. It was gone. Just…gone. Stolen by a faceless, nameless thief.
(I had to pause to regain myself from a fit of maniacal laughter just now. Sorry.)
And we thought yesterday’s troubles couldn’t end soon enough. We didn’t know they were just scooting over for the big boys, who were moving in today.
It isn’t like we weren’t warned. Momma said there would be days like this. So did Job…and Jesus:
“Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.” ~Job 14:1
“…in the world you shall have tribulation…” ~John 16:33
So, yeah. There you have it. Troubles do eventually pass. Some linger for years. Some even a lifetime. Whether now (this life, this realm) or later (the afterlife, eternity), all troubles will pass. The passing may be unpleasant. The troubles yet to come may make you pine for the ones you have now, as if these were blessings and not burdens.
I just wanted you to know: troubles come and troubles go. Some troubles are coming while the others are going. Sometimes you can take positive actions to hasten their departure. Other times, all you can do is let them run their course.
One thing I know: without faith in a higher purpose, without faith that all of this seeming madness makes sense to the One Whose perspective is as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth, this constant parade of trouble might get more than a little disheartening.
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The JourneyMan by D. Gene Strother is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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