Generation to Generation
It’s Complicated: Family as a Means of Grace - Part 5
June 1, 2025
Deuteronomy 6:1-9
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength. These words that I am commanding you today must always be on your minds. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up.
Deuteronomy 6:5-7
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At first glance, I’d say I didn’t inherit much from my family when it comes to faith. We went to church, but never talked about it at home. Yet, looking back, I realize that without my grandmother’s quiet and steady faith, I probably would not be a Christian at all.
Like my parents, she rarely spoke about faith out loud. But she was a devout Catholic, raising five children in the church even though her husband never attended. She prayed faithfully every day — perhaps more than anyone I’ve ever known. I didn’t learn about her prayer corner until after our daughter was born. She sat there daily, praying for every member of her family by name, all the way down to the great grandchildren whose names I don’t even know.
I’m sad to admit that early in my overzealous Baptist years, I was convinced by the church that Catholics couldn’t be “saved,” and I worried about Gram’s salvation. She always dreamed of one of her grandsons becoming a priest, and I was her last hope. I shattered that when, in 6th grade, I convinced my parents to join the Baptist church.
Years later, after I became a pastor and she met my wife, she was deeply grateful. Not only was her lifelong prayer answered by having a minister in the family, but she also cherished gaining a new granddaughter-in-law and great-granddaughter. She saw God’s faithfulness in my life even if it didn’t look the way she expected.
Faith doesn’t always get passed down through perfect teaching or clear conversations. Sometimes it comes through presence — through someone showing up, holding space, or quietly living a life centered on God. That kind of faith may not look impressive, but it plants deep roots.
As Moses shaped a new people out of those freed from Egypt, God gave them a commandment that Jeus would later call the greatest: to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. He said, “Talk about these things when you are sitting around your house and when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are getting up.”
My family didn’t exactly do that, at least not out loud. But in her own way, my grandmother did. She spoke about it through her prayers, long before I even understood or appreciated what she was doing. She modeled it every time she took me to the church to light a candle for someone who was sick and every time she went to the nursing home to take communion to someone.
And most of all, she spoke about it through her unconditional love. She was deeply hurt when I left the Catholic church. Yet even when I foolishly tried to convert her to a faith she already understood more deeply than I did, she never stopped loving me.
It’s not always obvious, but God’s love does reach down to us from generation to generation.
Where can you see it in your family line?
