Thursday, October 30, 2008

Seeing God in the Coolest Places

So i've been meaning to blog on this for a few weeks now, but i've been crazy busy and well just didn't get around to it. A few weekends ago, I rode with my family to Dallas to visit my great grandma who is in the hospital. I went because I needed to drive my mom (who couldn't find her way out of the metroplex if her life depended on it) and my sick mawmaw back home. The trip was a little unexpected, but it was cool to spend some time with the family. We got into Cisco a little later than planned, so I decided to stay the night and ride back home with my mom that Sunday morning. Anyways that's not really the point to this blog, but in true Mr. Henson form, I'll just say, "I told you all that, to tell you this."

I have an amazingly cool pawpaw and what's even cooler is how much of a Godly man he is. We were sitting around the table, just talking about life and everything in between, when he handed me a newspaper and started telling me about this article about some students that were taking Greek and Hebrew classes to better understand the Bible. He knew that I was also taking Greek and was fascinated about what different passages looked like in the original text. You have to know this about my pawpaw. He grew up in a family of 6 kids, down in the swamps of Louisiana, DIRT POOR, not only did he not finish high school, he never even finished 8th grade, he has worked 99% of his life in the oil field or some occupation that deals with it, the other 1% of his life was either spent on a river fishing or on a ship in the navy, his entire family is Pentecostal (or LDP), he has lost not one, but two of his three kids, and he still gets up everyday at age 69 to go to work because he doesn't want my mawmaw to every HAVE to work to support them. As we sat around that table, he told me story after story of how he would be reading his bible and pondering it's meaning, when God would speak to him and not only help him understand it, but also show him where he could apply it in his life. He told me a few stories about how he would share God's love with some of the field hands he works with everyday.

For much of my life I really didn't know much of his story. I didn't know that for much of his life he shunned everything that had to do with God because of his families background. I didn't know that one day he felt like he should take his family to this small country church because he didn't know where else to turn.

God has blessed me with an amazing family. God has blessed me with an amazing Grandfather who LOVES God and people. I only pray that one day, I will be half of the man that he is, because if that happens the Kingdom will look different.

1 comment:

Nic Burleson said...

Two things: First of all, LDP - That is freakin' HILARIOUS! Second - Thanks for sharing some of your grandpa's story. I've always been very impressed with your grandparents and it's awesome to see how God is using them.