The God of generations. What does that mean to you?
Anytime I would spend the night with my Great Grandmother I would fall asleep to her praying or reading the Bible. She would stay up late praying for us. There was even a night I told myself one day, that would be me. I would have that “mature” faith. A faith that takes years to develop so that then, God would answer my prayers like He answers hers. Interviewing my great grandmother helped me to realize that the God of my grandmother is my God too.
My great grandmother's generation is called the silent generation. It’s called this because when they were children they were meant to be seen but not heard. They were meant to obey their parents and never ask why. Things where just the way they were, there was no debate. My Welita jokes that she was a hillbilly because she grew up in the woods with a big family, 11 siblings. Their job was to help work, there was no school. My Welita says that sometimes missionaries would go venture into the woods looking for people who lived there and would take them to school. My Welita loved going to school and thought of it as a blessing. There she was taught the alphabet and given a bible. She taught herself to read entirely from the Bible.
From a young age she knew of God. Her mother only told stories of the Bible that she learned from her mother and so on. There wasn’t a church nearby that they would go to, but every once in a while they would be able to drive to a nearby baptist church.
My grandmother was born in the middle of world war 2. She remembers when the teacher would take them to get ice cream cones. On the way there, she remembers seeing train carts filled with young men and hearing the crying and wailing of mothers praying to God for their sons after being sent to war.
These few stories were just from the interview but anytime I spent with my Welita she would always tell me stories about her life. I love picturing her running around in the woods with no shoes not even knowing how God would bless her. The blessing of having children of her own, to seeing her great grandchildren and now her great grandson is going to be a father! Wow. That’s legacy. The things my Welita has seen and will see. This was the last thing my Welita said to me at the end of her interview.
“After all this, the end of my life, I feel like God was watching over me and protected me. Even when I thought God was not listening, He was.”
So I ask again, God of generations. What does this mean to you. To me, it means that the same God who protected my great grandmother, protects me. The same God who heard her, hears me. My Welita tells me about her life and I see God's hand of protection. I see all of her answered prayers. God is listening. God hears you. I challenge you to look around and see the people still living on this earth. Listen to their story and tell yours.
Psalm 145:4 MSG
“Generation after generation stands in awe of your work; each one tell stories of your mighty acts.”
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