My grandmother had a deep spiritual bond to life and to me. I learned this by watching. I watched her attend church. I watched her pray. I felt her love for me, and I learned. During a Lenten study group I once led, we started off by talking about our faith backgrounds. For each person who had not been raised in the church, the draw to church had been a faithful grandparent who shared his or her faith with the grandchild. As a child, I felt that my grandmother was the closest thing I knew to God: familiar, loving, fun and omnipresent.
This message is adapted from “For the Love of Grandparents” written by Clare LaPlante in the May 2000 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine.