No, Grandma, No!

There's a book every elementary school teacher of the lower grades is familiar with. It is a book written and illustrated by David Shannon titled No, David! The title comes from the constant yelling and reorienting directed at the protagonist, a little scamp of a fellow who gets into all kinds of toddler-worthy mis-behaviors on page after page. Yet, at the end of the day, the loveable David finds that despite all his shenanigans, he is loved. While Grandma didn't display any of David's antics, she did display a habit that drove me as crazy as David's mom felt in that well-loved book!

Grandma's exasperating habit came about because of one thing Grandma never learned to do: she never learned to drive. If my father had lived, she might have. She went to Wisconsin at the time my mother was about to deliver yours truly, and my father fell in love with her. Which is why my first name is Maria, he wanted to honor her by naming me after her. He took her out driving one day while she was there and came back with a report that she had all the makings of a good driver, a skill that would come in handy for a missionary such as she, he averred. Unfortunately, three weeks after my arrival my father went home to Heaven and that was the end of Grandma's foray into driving. So it was busses and walking for her the rest of her life.

While most people would groan at having to take a bus, Grandma counted it a privilege--an opportunity to share the Gospel! Translation? If you did not want to hear about Jesus, you had better not sit next to her! Unfortunately, at that time I sported a snarky spirit that presaged today's yuppy/woke ones. Also unfortunately, my mother's adamant rejection of hearing Grandma talk about the Lord (a long story in itself) egged it on. Sometimes I would actually cringe when Grandma came home and, her face flushed with joyful animation, went on and on about someone she had regaled with stories about her Savior as she galivanted around town on the bus.

But what absolutely drove me up the wall was her penchant for giving what she had to any bus companion who showed even a glimmer of open receptiveness to her sharing of the gospel. Invariably, she would ask her newfound friend if he/she had a Bible. If the answer was negative, she would pull her large print Bible out of her purse (what else do you think those Grandma-sized bags are good for?) and offer it to him or her. More often than not, her bus partner would accept the offering. And I would sizzle.

A Bible, you see, is such a personal and loved possession. If it is of the paper and ink variety, notes are scribbled in the margins when God gives you insight about something you have read. When a verse jumps out at you and you know that you know that you know that God is speaking to you personally through said verse, you color it with a colored pencil (in those days the color de jour was red--now I have a whole box of different colors to make my Bible oh, so beautifully personalized!). A Bible that is written in, a Bible that is colored in, a Bible whose pages show the unmistakable wear and tear of having been read voraciously, is a loved Bible. It ends up being a type of journal of one's walk with the Lord. How loved are the markings where we have read His love letters to us, HIs children, and have received personal encouragement! So how in the world could Grandma so cavalierly simply give such a precious, loved possession away to a complete stranger?????

"Janinita, they were not strangers after I told them about Jesus. And how else are they going to learn His Words?"

The rebellious me would say, "But now you don't have one, Grandma!"

"That's okay," she would say. "I can get another."

And Grandma would go buy another Bible for herself, a brand new, pages still-stuck-together one. On her behalf, my spirit would bow down in grief that all those lovely notes she had written were no more and she was having to start from scratch to add the tell-tale marks that bespeak a well-loved and well-read Bible. The well-marked Grandma Bible that I wanted to treasure when she went to her reward was once again gone. Yes, I was jealous of the recipients of Grandma's black and white personalized walk with Jesus.

But now, with the wisdom of decades, I cut Grandma a little slack.

As a teacher I loved the beginning of every school year, when I had the opportunity to cover blank walls with the promise of new learning in new ways. The fresh décor held such palpable hints of the learning to come that school year! I relished the crisp smell of newness that spoke of good things to come. Now I think, maybe when Grandma was confronted with a new, never-scribbled-in Bible that was what she felt. Maybe instead of the sense of loss I felt, she perceived the gift giving in a totally different way, feeling instead an exciting sense of possibilities for digging out brand-new treasures from God's Word.

Many times through the years people would approach Auntie Trinie and tell her how much the magazine Voz en el desierto meant to them. I look forward to Heaven and hearing the acclaims from Grandma's favored bus companions about what her sharing of Jesus and the giving of His Word meant to them.

Now I think that instead of cringing and decrying Grandma's continual Bible-giving with a silent "No, Grandma, no!" I should have been cheering her on with a "Yes, Grandma, yes!"

"...we labour, that … we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." 2 Corinthians 5:9-10