Thur Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

Have you ever been asked the question, “What person would you like to meet living or dead that you’ve never met?” Even though I have met Him in my heart and in my soul, obviously the number one answer would be “Jesus Christ” whom I have never physically met, but one day will. Of all the people I’ve ever known about, read about, or heard about, if I could meet one person today it would be a person that I never met. It would be a person that died long before I was born, but a person who for a number of reasons has been and always will be one of the most special people in my life and that was my mother’s mother – my grandmother.

You could go back and Google her name and you probably wouldn’t find anything on the computer. She was a very petite woman and very soft spoken. She was a school teacher. She taught at Grayson High School and the town where I grew up – Oakwood. She lived a very non-descript life. She is buried in a small cemetery just outside of Winder, Georgia. The more I know about her and the more i hear of others who were taught by her and who knew her, the more I am convinced she was one of the greatest women who ever lived.

The number one thing that my grandmother was known for is what I am going to be taking about this morning. It is a subject that quite frankly wouldn’t get you too fired up and excited to come learn about on the surface. If I had called you last night at home and said, “I am going to talk to you about how to be meek and gentle on Sunday.” Your response would probably have been, “Thanks for telling me. I will just keep hitting the snooze button on that morning.” Yet, I want to tell you that you can truly measure your relationship to God by how much meekness and gentleness you have in your life. My grandmother illustrates why.

My mother told me that people used to marvel at Mama Howse over two things: 1) how gentle and kind she was with everybody; and 2) how she could always return good for evil. What makes that so remarkable is something you would have never known about my grandmother unless you had done some digging.

My grandmother lost three children. She almost lost four. She had a little five year old boy that was the apple of her eye. He was truly a “momma’s boy.” He took sick and in three days after he got sick he died. My grandmother was devastated. It wasn’t too long after that my grandmother had a little girl. When that girl was about one year old she had another little girl. They brought so much joy back into the heart of my grandmother to replace the sorrow and the broken-heartedness of losing that son. Then, when the oldest girl was 2 ½ and the youngest girl was 1 ½ they got sick with the same illness that took her son and both died in the same week and they were buried together. Again, at that time, the casket was always placed in the house. Later, somebody recounted that they heard my grandmother in the kitchen crying out to God and saying, “O God! Will you ever let me have any children that I can keep?”

The amazing thing about my grandmother was not one time did she ever get bitter, not one time did she ever get angry, not one time did she ever lash out at God or anyone else. There were two things that never left my grandmother’s heart that go together in life: a trust in God and a tenderness toward others.