It Came Through My Grandmother

Everything he has came through one woman, and she was not a remarkable person by any measure the world uses.

She kept a small house. She had four opinions and held all of them until she died. She could not have told you what she believed in any organized way, and if you had asked her she would have said something about the Lord and changed the subject.

But she took him on Sundays from the age of four, without asking anybody's permission, and she talked to God out loud in the kitchen while she worked, and she said his name in those kitchen conversations often enough that he grew up knowing he was being mentioned somewhere important.

At the graveside, at thirty three, he told God that he would hand it on.

His children are thirty one and twenty eight.

Neither of them has any interest at all. He did the things: he took them, he read to them, he answered questions honestly, and there was never a crisis or a rebellion, and by their late teens they had both simply drifted off the way water finds a level.

There are grandchildren now. Nobody takes them anywhere.

And what he has concluded, and he is a man who does not say things he has not thought through, is that the line stops with him. A woman with four opinions and a small house handed something across two generations, and he received it whole, and it dies with him, and the arithmetic of that is not complicated.

You may have concluded something similar. You may have received a thing you did not earn from somebody who could not explain it, and failed to pass it on, and worked out that you are the last of something.

Paul does the same arithmetic

Now let me put something in front of you where an apostle does exactly the counting you have been doing, and see where he lands.

Paul is writing to a young man he loves, and near the top of the letter he traces where the thing came from.

When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.2 Timothy 1:5

You are holding something that dwelt rather than something that was handed across, and dwelling is not in anybody's gift. 2 Timothy 1:5 traces it through two women and then says persuaded about the third, and the Holy Spirit is the one who did all three.

Which dwelt first

He names the grandmother. That is the first thing to notice, and it is not a small thing: the apostle traces the line back past the mother to an old woman who is not otherwise in the record for anything.

And then, having traced it, look at how he speaks about the third generation.

I am persuaded that in thee also.

Not: which you then received and now hold. Not: which has been successfully transmitted. Persuaded. It is the language of a man expressing confidence about something he cannot see directly and did not arrange, and it is deliberately not the language of a manufacturing process.

Faith moved through three generations in that family, and the apostle describes it as dwelling, which is a word for something that takes up residence, and residence is not something a previous occupant can arrange for the next one.

You received something that dwelt rather than something that was handed over, and dwelling was never in anybody's gift. 2 Timothy 1:5 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of a letter to a young minister and stands it at a graveside.

And I have to say the hard thing here, because this is the landing category and its rule is absolute: nothing in this article is exercised over another person's will, and that includes two adults in their thirties.

Your children are grown. They have drifted and they have not rebelled and they are entirely their own. There is no lever here, and if there were, God has chosen not to pull it, and a father borrowing one would be borrowing a counterfeit.

You are released from producing in anybody what was produced in you. Scripture describes faith taking up residence rather than being transferred, and the Spirit of God has been in that family for three generations without a single delivery note.

What his grandmother did not do

And now let me say something about the woman with four opinions, because you have been comparing yourself to her and the comparison is wrong.

She did not hand you anything. Think about it properly. She took a small boy on Sundays and talked to God in a kitchen. She did not have a method, she had a life, and you were near it. And what happened in you happened in you, and she could not have explained how and would have been embarrassed to be asked.

If she had been able to hand it over, she would have handed it to her own children first, and I would put money on it that at least one of them did not take it.

You are not the failed link in a chain, because it was never a chain. It is written in exactly those terms, and that is the plain force of a faith that dwelt in Lois and in Eunice and then in Timothy without anybody managing the passage, and His Spirit is the one who did all three.