As Easter approaches, I’ve brought out the appropriate holiday bin in order to decorate for our family celebration on Sunday. The basketful of treasures pictured here is probably my favorite item in the box, each one crocheted or knitted by my Gramma B (except for the eggs which were made by my friend’s mom). When I look at these heirlooms, I think about my grandma’s daily life. She consistently invested her time and used her hands to express her love and consideration for other people, and her actions were often accompanied by words of her faith in God. When I remember my grandma, I find myself hoping that the legacy of faith that she gifted me with never becomes just another heirloom. I hope that I am teaching my own kids that faith is not just a tradition to be pulled out of a box and ritually repeated on holy days and holidays. I hope their nostalgia for the past never transcends the opportunities of their present to experience the faithfulness of God firsthand - opportunities to be stretched and depend on Him, opportunities to show compassion to others in today’s crises, opportunities to worship and serve from hearts of gratefulness rather than simply out of habit and discipline. I hope that the legacy of faith that my grandma gave to me is one my children are personally and powerfully experiencing in their own lives, just as I am in mine. I believe if they saturate their hearts and their motivations with the love of God, their faith will be active and growing. That belief is the reason I constantly pray that the legacy of faith I am sharing with them will continue to be a living thing, even more precious than a remnant of the past.
“So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil… Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
- Deuteronomy 11:13-14, 18-21 NIV
