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In the fall of 1992, I was sitting in a hospital room with my grandmother on my mother’s side. My grandmother was almost 98 years old and her time on earth was drawing to a close. The television was on in her room and on it appeared the space shuttle. As I watched the space shuttle, I thought about my grandmother’s life.
My grandmother was born in 1895 and grew up on a small farm in South Georgia. Her father was a circuit rider preacher who was responsible for several churches. Life in those days were difficult and even with several churches to support him, my great-grandfather still had to depend on his small farm to feed and house his family of five children.
In most cases, five children on a farm was a blessing, but my great-grandfather’s children were all girls. On top of that, my great-grandfather’s health was poor. This meant that the burden of maintaining the farm rested on the shoulders of his wife and all five girls.
In those days, especially for a poor farmer, there were no tractors or farm machinery to help make farming easier. Instead there was old Bess, the mule, who pulled the plow. When it came to picking the crops, they were done by hand usually in the hot Georgia sun. As if maintaining the farm wasn’t a hard enough job, the cooking and canning of what was grown also rested on my great-grandmother and the five girls.
Their main protein was the fish, usually catfish that my great-grandmother caught in the fish pond near the house. If the fish weren’t biting, then it was a dinner of vegetables - fresh or canned according to the season of the year. Clothing of course was hand made at home, but the fabric was store bought. So whatever fabrics were on sale, were usually the ones chosen to make the family’s clothing.
My grandmother did not grow up with toys and games like I had. Instead, doll houses were drawn into the dirt road with a stick. This of course did have its plus side in that my grandmother and her sisters could make as big a house as they wanted. Their dolls were made from dog fennel; a local weed that could be discarded later. The little time that my grandmother and her sisters had for games and playtime relied heavily on their creative imaginations.
As I reminisced about my grandmother’s childhood while the space shuttle was on the television, I asked my grandmother, “What was it like to have lived during a time when so many changes in technology had happened? What was it like to have grown up farming with a mule drawn plow and to now live in a world with the space shuttle?” My grandmother with her wisdom of close to 100 years replied, “Those were not the good old days. These are the good old days.”
Then it hit me. That was grandmother’s secret to living so long. Grandmother always lived in the present not the past. Grandmother had known the struggles and hardship of life on a poor Georgian farm. Yet, she had not dwelled on those hardships, instead, grandmother always had moved forward in life no matter how difficult the challenge was.
When my grandparents married, they spent their first year of wedded bliss living off of peanut butter and crackers so they could go to business school at night. After they had saved up enough money, they bought one gas station, then another. At one time my grandfather owned all four gas stations at the same cross roads. When Ford came out with the Model T, they sold all four gas stations and bought the rights to selling Model T’s. Years later when my grandfather died, my grandmother was financially able to stay home and raise their two children.
Both my mother and my uncle went to college on funds invested from the cars and trucks my grandfather had sold over the years. My twin sister and I also went to college on my mother’s inheritance from her father. My grandmother’s determination to work hard, to not look back, but to live in the present and plan for the future had been more than successful. Yet, in all those years when my grandmother went without, she never thought of herself as poor, because there was always others who had so much less. In fact, my grandmother was always generous in her giving to others.
When I read today’s lesson about the Israelites complaining because they had no meat to eat, I thought about my grandmother and her life. I do not remember my grandmother complaining about her life; instead she was grateful for all the blessings God had given to her. My grandmother was not a Rockefeller by any means, but whatever she had she was more than willing to share with others.
Moses on the other hand was stuck with a group of people who longed for the good old days. The Lord God Almighty was leading them to the Promise Land flowing with milk and honey and all they could see was what was not on their dinner table right now. So they wept and complained to Moses to give them meat in the wilderness. In turn, Moses complained to the Lord for burdening him with them. In response to Moses’ complaint, the Lord in His mercy instructed Moses to set aside seventy elders to help him govern the people. This proved to be what we would call a godsend. Moses no longer had to carry the burden of the people alone. He now had others to help him.
In the gospel reading for today from Mark, Jesus encourages his disciples to not be jealous of others that are not of their group, but are using Jesus’ name to heal people. Jesus tells them, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
Nothing is impossible with the Lord. Where we see hardship, the Lord sees a challenge. Where we see despair, the Lord offers hope. Where we see no more to share, the Lord blesses a cup of water given in His Name. It is only when we stop complaining and are willing to listen to the Lord’s guidance can we move forward into living His promises. As my grandmother said, “Those were not the good old days. These are the good old days.” May we cherish each day as a gift from the Lord and share what we have with those who have less for all good things come from the Lord.
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