A Redneck Pastor and a Grand Old Man

My Jidee (“grandfather”) passed away at age 95, after being bedridden by a stroke. Before his funeral, at my grandmother’s house, I was introduced to the man who’d been my Jidee’s pastor.

I’m going to be honest; I wasn’t impressed.

He was a big fella, a country boy I was more likely to call a redneck than anything else. After he left, my grandmother started talking. “That man,” she told me, “loved your Jidee. Every Sunday since the stroke, he came and took your grandfather to church.”

“Mikey,” my aunt broke in, “he carried Jidee.”

Turns out, every Sunday, that “redneck” would walk down to the house, pick up my Jidee in his big arms, and carry my grandfather two blocks back to the church. He’d set Jidee down in the front row, and they’d have church. And afterward, he’d carry him home and lay Jidee gently back into his bed—every single Sunday, rain or shine.

My grandmother patted my knee and said again, “He loved your Jidee.”

Now I understood—and felt ashamed for underestimating a “redneck.” I had not seen who he really was because of my own presumptive bias.

Today, when I picture my grandfather as that old man, resting in the big guy’s arms—trusting him to accomplish that which my Jidee could not, I see more than just a heartwarming story from my family history. I see myself in the arms of God’s Holy Spirit —who loves me. And every day, rain or shine, I see Him faithfully carrying me into righteousness, into hope, into joy and service and kindness and so much more. My job, I understand now, is the same as Jidee’s was then: to cooperate, to go along and let Him do the heavy lifting for me.

Tomorrow, when you wake up to your Christian life, you might see (figuratively) a huge, immovable stone in your path, or an infirmity of sin that keeps you from doing things that should be easy, or any of a hundred other reasons why your Christian life is simply too hard, or too discouraging.

But it’s my prayer that, by the time you and I are done with this reading plan, when you contemplate your daily Christian life, you’ll choose to see, instead, that the Holy Spirit is carrying you through to glory like a redneck pastor and my grand old man.