Going green is a big deal these days. I guess I should be proud to say we’ve been going green for a long time… recycling and composting deli scrap buckets since 1985, growing our own organic produce- that kind of thing. But such actions still won’t ever actually redeem us.
Now what does that have to do with St. Patrick’s Day? Well- March 17th was my grandpa’s birthday. The family always had great fun celebrating this wonderful, humble, godly man. When I was ten years old, modeling my new two-piece bathing suit (back in the sixties), he shook his head. I heard him say, “Jennifer should not be wearing that.” It was probably the beginning of much upcoming teenage eye-rolling on my part. But I still loved my grandpa.
He was right though! Even when “everyone else is doing it”, it doesn’t make it right. Mine was a rebellious generation (as many can be when going through puberty?). But the negative effects might’ve been diminished if more parents had said no to so many things. Even now, colors, appearance and styles may change, but of the underlying root causes, some things never change. Man has a “want” to sin…
Just to wrap up this post about my grandpa and St. Patrick’s Day… The last memory I have of my grandpa was actually after his death to cancer in the late seventies. I would often have a dream of him standing at the bottom of some steps, with something like the glory of heavenly light surrounding him. He would be crying and holding out his arms to me. Before getting saved in 1996, I would discount the dreams by assuming it was about him, and that he was sad he’d died, and he wanted to come back. Never thought it was about me. But the dreams would continue, sometimes a year or two apart. But always poignant, always leaving my heart a little sore.
In the mid-nineties, I came to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. A few years passed after that…And then it hit me: I hadn’t had any more of those recurring dreams of grandpa! I came to realize, the dream was about my grandpa calling out for me to be saved. I’m not claiming that “spirts” can talk to us from the dead, in some Ouija-board type of fortune-telling. But I thought of the verse from Luke 16:22-23: “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.” My grandpa never wanted me to be like that rich man. It just took awhile for me to figure that out!
I’m so happy I will see my grandpa some day in heaven. Thank you Lord, for those you’ve put in our lives, who pray for us even before we know we need the prayers.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day indeed 🙂
