As a kid, I had broken my landspeeder by now or at least made it valueless to future collectors. Presents improve as you get older. Yesterday Dad gave me a gift that has endured three generations of my family. My great-grandfather Lewis Dayton Reynolds rode the circuit of churches in his area of West Virginia (early on with his faithful horse!) from 1912 to 1945. The year young Pastor Reynolds got the call the RMS Titanic sank and World War I was about to sweep his young-adult world away. By the year he died, the US had just won the Second World War and we were headed into the Cold War. Russia was an ally when he started and a foe when he died, he went from a horse to automobile, and from churches without pianos to churches moving into more urban areas and acquiring some possessions.
All that time, he carried a pocket New Testament (Oxford University Press!) and kept careful notes in it, some of which are done in symbols whose meaning were lost when he died. The Bible has clippings from newspapers of songs he loved and at least one (dubious) medical cure. Pastors had a great many jobs in his time.
Dad said this about the Bible: “My great grandfather, John P. Reynolds, told his son, Dayton Reynolds, my grandfather, words like this, ‘Never bring a reproach on the name of Jesus.’ This may have been about the time grandpa was ordained to the ministry. This is still good counsel.”
It is awesome advice. I have children who have taken it and much of my family lives it. Certainly great-grandfather, my grandfather, and father lived up to those words. Never forget that such men were and are still and view history through that knowledge. The past cannot be measured merely by things. There is a moral standard, universal, unchanging, and on that scale some men are great, some men become great, and others have greatness thrust on them. My great-grandfather was not born great, he became great through reading and acting on the message of the book I now hold. God help me!
In our day, we are richer than my great-grandfather. My phone alone has more books on it than he would ever own.. We have more education and opportunities and I am thankful for this, but greatness does not depend on either. My great-grandfather and his father did their duty as God gave them the ability to do their duty. My great-grandfather lived up to his father’s appeal to never bring reproach on the name of Jesus.
This is a hopeful example if you are young, but a bit sad for some of us who are not so young.
At the start of my I life I did not. I began badly, but this much is true: I could stop, repent, and do what was right from that day forward. I can seek mercy, forgiveness, and do my duty. We need not be defined by our beginnings, but can trust that God will have mercy at our end.
Sometimes if we begin badly, we think we might as well go on. The page is blotted. There is no hope. No. No. No. We can stop, do what is right, and serve. When we fail, we can go forward in service and love. They say hurting people hurt people, but we can stop. We can start a new direction. We can do well where we have done badly.
That is the message of my great-grandfather’s Bible: endure, labor, work, have hope. I turn the pages and reach the second chapter of Luke and there is the Christmas story. I read it and see mercy, hope, grace. This is the great gift of Christmas: humankind began badly, but can end well.
The message endures from generation to generation and it is the message of the first gifts of Christmas. Mary’s gifts from God did not break. The little Lord Jesus some crying he certainly made, but he did not break ever. The Romans tried, but the Cross was Jesus’ choice.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In