This post is part of the GEN3 project. Learn more about it here!
When I think of God pursuing me, I think of my grandpa. Though he grew up in a non-religious household, he came to faith as a teen…simply by reading the Bible. When I imagine that dark-haired boy sitting in his room, poring over the thin pages of that fat book, I imagine God saying, “I choose you!”
By choosing my grandpa, He set the process in motion to choose me.
And for me to choose Him.
World War II found my grandfather in southern Holland, just over the border from Germany. It was a starving time, and he was homesick, so he combined the two needs into one and adopted a local orphanage. The children called him “Uncle.”
This athletic man (a college long-jumping champion), this word-lover who could read a French Bible aloud in English and who tried to learn Hebrew at home — I like to imagine him holding this battered Hebrew-English Psalm-book and scribbling his own poem in the back. “Come to Me, all that are wounded and weary of war,” he wrote, “and I will give you My Peace.”
Though he didn’t know it, my grandpa was writing for me. My cousin, a skilled conservationist, has washed these page and repaired them with Japanese paper, peeled blue cloth off the dilapidated cover, and glued it onto fresh binding. I’ve carried this resurrected book across the ocean many times — a reminder to remain at home in the mansion that is God’s word.
It boggles my mind to think that someone so important to my life — is also someone I’ve never met. Though I was born in the year my grandpa would have turned seventy, he had already gone on Home on to heaven.
But in many ways, I’ve stepped into his shoes.
Not on purpose. No, I didn’t know all this about him when God tapped me on the shoulder as a teen. But (like my grandpa) I’m a little zany, and I love to learn. Words are my favorite, and I too study Hebrew at home. Like him, I’m still single in my thirties — yet I talk about “my kids,” the children I’ve made a part of my life.
I know my grandfather was a man of prayer: often pacing back and forth by the creek, praying for the world, and for the five children God gave him late in life. (I’m sure the results of those prayers have trickled down to me). If there’s anything I want to pass on to the next generation (anyone on whom God gives me influence), it’s this:
A heart-deep reliance on the One who does all things well.
Whether it sprouts out in prayer, or love, or words, what a good and beautiful heritage this is!
“Let this be recorded for a generation to come,
so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.”
Elisabeth Adams 