Tribute to Grandma

It is not a great achievement to live into old age; it is a great achievement to do good things for as many years as my grandmother did them.

My childhood was magical in large measure because of my grandparents. It is strange to think of the world they drew me into now that I have become a child of the internet/entertainment age. Their world seems to me to be wholly dissimilar to my own now. The world I inhabit feels less real somehow. They worked the earth and produced an abundant garden and an abundant table.

My grandmother could never quite figure out the computer my sister got for her. She had a Facebook page that others checked for her. She didn't want to see someone's post; she wanted to bring them into her life by bringing them to her table, where she served selflessly by her tireless efforts in the kitchen and as a conversationalist. She may be one of the last of the true hostesses of the greatest generation.

For entertainment they fished, gardened and traveled to see relatives. They didn't spend money. As depression era people, they saved, invested, planned, and assumed that no one would take care of them. Giving seemed always to be unidirectional with them. We were the beneficiaries; they the benefactors. They saved in order that they might give. In our day, too many people easily part with money and find it difficult to save because, well, we "deserve" things. My grandmother didn't feel that she deserved anything and therefore everything that came to her was received as a blessing.

In thinking back to my experiences with them as a child, I am struck by how humble it all was, and how majestic it all felt. We were a crowd in a 900 square foot home, and it felt so spacious and so alive. There were humble toys for a young boy, but they were enough because everyone was there, present, and it felt like the infinite joy of home.

They were simple blue collar people. They didn't assess the academic pedigree of people before they would talk with them. My world is filled with educated and "plugged-in" people now, who grow bored with everything and everyone so quickly, including themselves. The time I spent with grandma passed at a slow, southern pace, but I was never bored. There were sunrises and gardens and selling tomatoes and catching worms for fishing and the beauty of nature and bounty upon bounty of the limitless extravagance of the ordinary lives of good people.

Especially in the day and age of scholastic feminism, my grandmother is an anomaly. She never went to college. She knew nothing of the virtues of a sorority, and wouldn't be able to decipher the works of Judith Butler at Berkeley, but she loved and served one man for 73 years. She saw it as essential to her glory as a wife and mother to sew, cook meals from scratch, grow produce from the ground, can food for the winter, wash and iron clothes and teach her children about Jesus. And on top of such a traditional life, she worked hard for AT&T after extensive training in math.

Grandma loved Jesus, and this perhaps more than anything made her an oddity in the modern world. Our world has moved on from Jesus, at least the biblical Jesus. We want a hipster Jesus, a pluralistic Jesus, a "historical" Jesus or a "modern" Jesus. But my grandma loved the Jesus she found in the pages of Scripture, and the character of that Jesus was formed in her over time.

The Church was important to grandma because Jesus was important to her. She did not go to church to receive alone, but also to give. And she gave for decades to Evangel Temple in Kansas City. She persevered through days when the church lost much of its health, and much of its membership. When I was a boy, grandma took me to her Sunday school class, where I first learned the lessons of the Bible. She gave liberally of time and treasure. She was prayer warrior, librarian, Sunday school teacher, janitor and, simply, "Sister Davidson." The day after grandma's funeral, I sat in a service at Evangel and watched as children scurried about and I looked at the vibrant Church community I saw there, and I wondered in the bustle if anyone would ever think of Sister Davidson in that place again. It was disappointing to me that there was no mention of her passing that morning, and yet here was a saint through whom God built that church. No matter, grandma would be content knowing that the church she loved perseveres. During her life she was not applauded in her church and in her death she was not applauded, which only makes room for the applause of heaven. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."

As for me, I will always cherish my grandmother's memory and her legacy. And when I read the role call of the saints in Hebrews 11, it is easy for me to imagine grandma's name there as well. I want to be for future generations what my grandma was to so many: a living link to a real and active and community-creating God.