Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Do you know Jesus?

On a date that I do not remember or at least can only narrow down to sometime while I was in college, I drove from Stillwater to Edmond, Oklahoma.  It must have been a long weekend, perhaps even Labor Day so I made the drive and visited my Grandpa, Raymond Canada.

Mind you, a visit meant a trip to one or two of his favorite beer joints so he could show off my skills on the pool table, have a couple beers, and then be treated to his driving back across the interstate highway to his house.   Let me just say there were no casualties reported.

The rest of my visit was usually spent watching baseball on his television that sometimes even had reception.  The trash can between the two old chairs in which we sat served as the spittoon for the package of Redman that he had on hand and always offered.

As we sat with the game on and both pretending that we could actually tell what was going in all of the fuzziness, I wondered.  Did my grandfather believe in Jesus?

What a thought for a young man to have dropped upon his shoulders.  Did his grandfather know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?  Should I ask him?

Could I interrupt the game that we were not really watching and ask him if he knew Jesus?  It was an important question.  Surely it had come up before.  Surely, that was a given.  Surely that matter had been addressed decades ago.  It’s not like you get a ribbon or medal that you wear when you profess Jesus as Lord.

Well, the baseball game was not going to hold my interest with this question wrapping itself around me.  I had to ask.

Before a word came out of my mouth, my grandfather—Raymond Canada—looked across the wastebasket spittoon and said, “You know, it’s all about knowing Jesus.”

Stunned, my only response was, “Yup.”  Soon to be college graduate and Marine officer, proud of his language skills, grandson extraordinaire replied with, “Yup.”

That was that.  The important stuff was cleared up without me having to ask anything.  Somehow, I think the fuzzy picture on the television cleared up a bit after than as well.


Yup!

2 comments:

  1. Could this be another example of Grandpa's clairvoyance? ? I was in my teens I attended church with a friend who's grandfather was the minister of an assembly of God church. During the service a woman began speaking in tongues. Having gown up in the nice quiet Disciples of Christ church I was shocked scared and facinated. I asked my dad about it later and he told me I should go talk to my grandpa. So I made the trek across the yard that separated our houses and I too sat in the chair with the trash can spitoon next to it and told Grandpa what I had seen and experienced. He explained to me what it was and also told me, specifically where in the bible I could find out more about it. Grandpa didn't talk a lot about his faith but I learned that day that it was based on a lit of study.

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