Italy

The Grandfather I Never Knew

/ pastorpete51 / 5 Comments

Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their fathers. Proverbs 17:6 ESV

The fading photograph of he and my grandmother sits on our bookshelf, and the shadow of his hat covering his eyes makes me wonder what color they were. Though our youngest son is named after him, the life he once lived is as mysterious to me as the lost continent of Atlantis. All I know is that at the ripe old age of 16, he boarded a steamer in Naples and arrived in New York to begin a new life with the help of three brothers who had come before.

All that remains behind is a 100-year-old barber kit that sits on the dresser in our guest bedroom and an antique barber chair that a local shop bought from my cousin. I never heard his voice or knew what his favorite food was. He never took me for ice-cream or walked with me to a park. But my grampa missed these things, not because he was a bad guy, rather as a result of my parent’s less than amicable divorce and his passing away just two years after I was born.

This morning as I was thinking about all I missed from never knowing my grandparents, I remembered our grandchildren. The Bible says that God has given them to us as a crown. and a crown should be on our head, just as grandchildren should always on our mind. When we give them our time, watching a movie together or playing with them in the back yard, we are giving them the memory of the sound of our laugh, the touch of our hand and the color of our eyes. As we share in every little moment – yes, even the hard ones, they will want to know why we pray with them as we put them to bed. They will remember the songs we sing as they sit by us in church and every hug when we can no longer be there to hold them. Though we may not leave them trust accounts brimming with cash, if they receive our faith then they have received our greatest treasure. Grandchildren are given us as a crown, so while we have breath let’s not be the grandparents they never knew. Instead, may our lives remind them, when they are in the middle of their own storms, to trust in Jesus and find that He is the one who has known them and loved them from the beginning of time!

Heaven’s Beauty Salon

/ pastorpete51 / 7 Comments

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:22 ESV

When my grandfather came from Italy, he became a barber and all six children had to pitch in and help. Though my dad learned the ins and outs of barbering while he was growing up, after coming home from the war, he decided that styling lady’s hair paid better so he got his license as a hairdresser. By the time I was a teen-ager Dad had his own beauty salon and when he closed on Mondays to clean the store, He and I had some of our best talks while sweeping the floor together and cleaning the hair dryers. Dad loved telling funny stories about the shop and one of his favorites was that the ladies always made sure to wash their hair before coming in, then paid Him to wash it again. They just could not bear the thought of my dad finding that their hair wasn’t already squeaky clean! Now you might think that silly, but don’t we sometimes do the same thing with God? He invites us to come to Heaven’s beauty shop (the church) – dirty hair and all. But instead, we decide that we need to get washed up at home, or if we do show up, we just worship halfheartedly because we feel unworthy to really participate. But the craziest part of all is that, unlike dad’s clientele, we do not even have to pay the bill. Instead, God has chosen to pay in advance at Calvary, for everything we have ever done. He is not angry that we show up with needs and problems, instead He asks to take away our burden of sin and in exchange give us His yoke of grace. Then He gently lifts away the condemnation of guilt and leaves us a new life style. Then He proudly shows anyone who wants to know that our hair as well as our soul is squeaky clean and ready for Heaven!