Granddaddy Whittled

Life is so full of things to take care of and we seem to move at break neck speed. I'm tired of it. I want to slow down and ponder. Do you ever do that? Do you stop the busy-ness of life long enough to think about the importance of all that goes on around us...or the lack of importance?

Sometimes I ponder whether or not I am getting old becaue I am thinking that way! Sometimes I wish I had done that more early in life. Took a day away from running in wide open speed and just spent it talking to God about the truly important things of life.

When I was younger, my Grandaddy Cook came to live with us some of the time. He would stay a few months with us and then go back to Alabama to stay there a while. He was not a man of many words. But even though he had begun to slow down his pace in life, he still kept his hands busy....the old "idle hands are the devil's workshop", I guess.... He used to find wood out in the woods to whittle.

Do you know what whittling is? I don't guess that happens much anymore. It's like so many things in our society, the craftsmanship is going away or being imported from other countries. It makes me sad. He would carve with his pocket knife. He kept that knife sharp with a whet stone (probably never heard of that either). He would carve animals or whistles, or whip handles. He used to find some kind of small tree growing and he would cut it down, peel back the bark in strips, cut out the middle of the tree between the bark strips, and then weave the bark into a whip. I can tell you that was an awesome toy for us - of course, we would tear each other up with them when no one was looking...... I've started rambling.

I would sit and watch Grandaddy and ask him questions as he whittled. Sometimes he would answer patiently but sometimes he would send me on my way so he could think. I think those were his times with the LORD. I think he pondered life and all that he had been through with the depression, the dust bowl in Texas, a house full of young children to raise when his wife died....I think he pondered how good the LORD had been to him to give him an old mule named Dick who lived 40 years and plowed most of them. What a blessing that old mule was to him and his family. And, when he thought about how his baby daughter had such a traumatic head injury as an infant, the docotrs said she would be a vegetable....but God was at work and that baby is my Mother - a precious woman. I think he talked to God...I know he talked to him when he really was sick....I could hear him praying out loud...

Do you ever stop to ponder where you've come from and how the LORD has blessed you? Do you ever talk to the LORD so that your children hear you? or your grandchildren?

Grandaddy didn't say much but He was a mighty big man in my life. He could make anything with his hands. He loved his family and he spent time pondering and listening to the LORD. Grandaddy prayed so that this grandchild heard him. He's been home now for more than 35 years.

One day, I will see him again.....and I'll bet I get to sit and watch him whittle as he continues to ponder all that the LORD continues to do for him.......

My prayer tonight is that you have the assurance you will soend eternity with your loved ones who have gone ahead of you to Heaven. You can only do that if you have a personal relationship with Jesus. You can leave me a comment if you want to know more about that relationship and I'll answer you....

God so loved the world, that He gave His only son (as a sacrifice) that whoever believes in Him won't die forever but have eternal life in Heaven after this life. It's like Grandaddy's carvings, God takes us like we are and makes us into a new creation by whittling away those things that are not of Him once you trust Him with you life by telling Him that you know you are a sinner (someone who doesn't do the right things), asking Him to forgive for those things you've done that weren't right, aksing Him to be the LORD of your life and walking away from those things like the new person in Him...