“I just wanted to tell you,” a lady at church said to me last night, “You’re husband has a ‘Grandma’ now.” I laughed, because I knew what she meant. In a sermon he preached several weeks ago, Howard had referred to a well-known preacher of the past who was lamenting on the death of his own grandmother, because she had always prayed for him while he was in the pulpit.
“I need a ‘Grandma’!” Howard had said, apparently feeling the weight of the responsibility of filling our pastor’s shoes during his absence and recuperation. “If God puts it on the heart of any of you ladies to be my praying ‘Grandma’, I hope you obey.”
“Yes, I’ve been praying for him ever since then,” the sprightly octogenarian confided.
“And his sermons are getting more powerful lately!” I exclaimed. She agreed with me that there has been a great anointing on Howard’s recent messages and impassioned delivery.
Wednesday evening pulpit duties are usually shared by one of several lay-ministers in our church, however. Last night another grandmother, a preacher herself, brought the message. The diminutive lady, who makes me think of my saintly mother, is a powerhouse of spiritual energy and wisdom as she expounds from the moveable podium placed directly in front of the rows. Not that she stays behind it; her dynamic, bubbling style keeps her striding back and forth as she drives home scriptural truths and insights.
Speaking on the righteousness of God, she paused at one point to give a personal example in her sermon. “I’m going to pick on Bill,” she teased, peering at her 88-year-old husband, himself a preacher. “We were headed out to preach in this isolated place—nobody could’ve found it but my husband, the Indian scout,--when we got turned around. We circled and circled out in the woods, not knowing where we were. We even called the preacher and he didn’t know where we were!” she exclaimed. “I kept telling my husband to stop, but he wouldn’t listen. So I yelled at him!” Then she lowered her voice and said, “God got hold of me for that. I had to apologize to Bill.”
Thank God for the wisdom and dedication of the elderly in our church. They set the example for the rest of us!
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