Two days before Easter, a grandson asked me to come to the cemetery to bury his grandmother. This young man shared these memories of this woman of faith with the big knuckles.
Grandma was not only a farmer’s wife but she also a farmer. She worked right alongside him on the dairy farm. Her routine day on the farm began at 3am every morning. She would grab her three kids and head out to the barn for the morning milking. The little ones would continue sleeping in the hay while the cows were being attended to. When this grandmother went to the nursing home, she would tell people to look at her big knuckles and then say: “My grandmother told me to never learn to milk a cow and so what do I do? I went right to the barn and learned how to milk a cow. Now look at these knuckles that I ended up with.”
Grandma learned how to drive the tractor when her husband was bailing hay. She even learned how to butcher the chickens when the family needed food for the table. When her beloved spouse died, grandma continued to work a large garden and she mowed their two-acre property by hand. Though she had a riding mower parked in the garage, she preferred to use the old-fashioned push mower. She continued to cut her own lawn until she was in her early 80’s.
Later in life, grandma found a new hobby, a wood-burning stove. She would feed that stove at all hours of the day and night and took great pride in maintaining, splitting and stacking her own wood. She had truckloads of wood delivered every fall to last the winter months. However, one time her grandson came out to stack some of the wood for her. After growing tired from the long day of stacking, the grandson promised to return in a few days and finish the large pile. When he came back, grandma had finished it all by herself, one log at a time. At age 80, she went to the doctor and he noticed a bruise on her leg. When he asked what it was from, she said that a chunk of wood had hit her leg while spilling logs. The bewildered doctor looked at her 90-pound frame and asked how in the world could she be splitting wood at her age. Considering that a silly question, grandmother answered, “Well, with an ax!” How else would one split wood?
After grandfather died, grandma memorized the 23rd Psalm for comfort and started reading the Bible. She would get up at 3am and read her Bible for four hours at a time. Her bible was well worn and held together with duct tape and when she could no longer see so well, she would have her grandson read the bible to her. Her grandson shared that she worked very hard on the family farm. She never took a vacation and her priorities were her faith and her family.
The Gospels assure us that the resurrection was physical, real, not just some hallucination inside the consciousness of believers. After the resurrection, we are assured, Jesus' tomb was empty, people could touch him, he ate food with them, and he was not a ghost.
Notice that after he rose from the dead, Jesus was seen by some, but not by others; understood by some, but not by others. Some got his meaning and it changed their lives, others were indifferent to him, and still others understood what had happened, hardened their hearts against it, and tried to destroy its truth. For this grandmother, she read in her bible that Jesus was alive and she chose to believe. Perhaps milking those cows that gave her those big knuckles gave her the humility and faith to simple believe. What do you believe?
Immanuel prays for us as we reflect; “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4)
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who celebrate Easter with their family and friends. May our service to God and neighbor give us the knuckles that bring peace of mind and hope that we will see all our ancestors including grandma again in Paradise.
