From the mouths of babes

The other day I was shopping and I overheard a great conversation. A grandmother had picked up her six-year-old grandson from school and they had been joined by the child’s mother. The grandmother reported that the boy had gotten a reward sticker that day. The mother had just begun to praise him when Grandma hastened to add, “But he didn’t earn it.” Then she looked at the child. “Tell your mother why you got the sticker,” she said.

The small voice answered with one word: “Grace.”

I’m right there with you, little guy. I don’t deserve any of my stickers, either. But isn’t God grand?

In the end

A couple of days ago I was eating lunch at a table in our cafeteria with several people, including an older friend named Dan. Now Dan is usually good for a story or two, and on this day he did not disappoint.

He told us about his great-grandfather, who lived back in Civil War days. The old gent “had a long, snowy white beard that he always kept neatly trimmed,” Dan said. “Every day he would sip a fifth of whiskey. He didn’t drink it; he sipped it. Everybody always said that whiskey would kill him. And it did–at the age of 102.”