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!
