Proud Papaw

 

My mother’s father, Papaw Epperly, was very proud of me.  I knew he was proud of me because he told me all the time and told everyone else all the time.  My younger brother Phillip and I would spend several weeks each summer in West Virginia with Papaw and Granny.  I learned shape notes, processing chicken eggs, and milking cows.  I often would go to work with Papaw and stay all day.  He was a plumber and worked on new houses.  Anyone that we came in contact with, Papaw would start his bragging about me.  One day, we stopped in Beckley, West Virginia to talk with a stone mason, and Papaw began his bragging.  I thought he would tell this man about me taking algebra in the eighth grade, or me playing in the band at school.  But Papaw told this man about my perfect attendance in Sunday school.  Papaw told of my Sunday school pin that had thirteen yearly bars under it.  I had never been very proud of my Sunday school pin, but I was that day.  My granddaddy was proud that I was faithful in church.  But it wasn’t my hard work; it was the faithfulness of my parents who took me to church each Sunday.  My parents took me to church, and I took my kids to church, and now they take my grandchildren to church.  Hey, that’s what it’s all about.  Teaching the next generation, and the next, and the next.  Do you take your children to church?  Do you take your grandchildren to church?  What about taking a neighbor kid with you to church?  Hey, you may start a whole new legacy!  Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”