A Sermon For My Grandmother

My dear grandmother passed away on June 14th this year. I had the privilege to preach her funeral as her grandson and as her brother in Christ. She was the biggest spiritual giant in my life; there is a gaping hole in my heart now, but I am grateful to God for the gift she was to me. Below is the rough transcript I preached in her honor at the funeral service. I hope it calls you to Jesus as she always did:

The Gift God Gave

Well, I’d like to thank you all for joining us to remember and celebrate the life of my sweet Grandmother, Patty Hawkins. If you don’t know, my name is Caleb. I am the youngest grandson and the third youngest grandchild. 

Each of us had unique and intimate relationships with Grandmother in various ways. Many of you wouldn’t know this, but mine involved music. Now, I don’t play music or anything like that, but music was a big part of my time with her. Ever since I was a little boy I can remember her singing and teaching me old songs, hymns she had learned as child herself there in Chamblee. 

As I got older and grew into adulthood, she would remind me of those old songs and sing them to me when I was down, discouraged, and discontent. The words she would sing would bring me back to life. So, I only know how to talk about her with music. As she would say, she woke up with “Jesus on her mind and a song in her heart” every day. 

I will be talking about her this morning through one verse and three hymns. Now don’t worry, I won’t be singing those hymns. The only lie my Grandmother ever told in her life was when she told me I was a good singer, so I will spare you that. 

The verse I’d like to share this morning is from the opening chapter of the book of Job. Job here is dealing with the loss of life, the loss of his loved ones, pain and suffering. And in his loss he speaks these famous words in verse 21: 

“The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

This is a tough verse. It deals with the harsh reality of life. Namely, that it is taken from us. God took lives from Job. It is one you don’t usually hear at a funeral. But I think we miss it’s sweetness by forgetting the first half of that sentence: “The LORD gave;” 

What God has taken away was first a gift to us. Grandmother was a gift, a beautiful gift to all of us, God gave every second of her to us, each moment, each laugh, each prayer, each hold of those hands, each and every breath we shared with her was undeserved to us. And she is the Lord’s to take away. In the same way we are stunned that God has taken her from us, we should be equally stunned that God first gifted her to us. Where would many of us be if God had not first given her to us? 

That’s why we say with Job, blessed be the name of the LORD. Because of what he gave us, a wonderful gift, that now he brings back to Himself.

There are three ways God gave her to us. Three aspects of the gift she was to the world:

Part 1: HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW

The first gift she was to the world comes to me in this hymn: His Eye Is on the Sparrow

Grandmother would sing this old song to me when I was discontent with life, and when I was unsatisfied with myself. She would sing this specific verse over and over to me:

“Why should I feel discouraged

Why should the shadows come

Why should my heart feel lonely

And long for heaven and home

When Jesus is my portion

A constant friend is He”

For Grandmother, Jesus was enough, and she wanted to remind me of that. No matter what happened externally she had everything she needed internally. She was at peace with God and had joy in Jesus. If all else failed she still had contentment with Jesus as her friend. That was real for her. 

And listen to the verse that she’d sing:

“Why should I long for heaven and home?

When Jesus is my portion”

You see grandmother wanted to be with Jesus. Yes, she talked about heaven from time to time, yes she longed to see her late child and her husband and her parents, yes she even longed to not be in any more physical pain which she dealt with her entire adult life, but, ultimately, the one thing she wanted most was to be with Jesus. 

If Jesus wasn’t in heaven I promise you she wasn’t going. Jesus was her portion, He was her Savior, her Shepherd, and her Friend; her Prophet, her Priest, and her King; He was her Lord, her Life, her Way, and her End. He was her everything. 

She lived in such a way to make us know that Jesus was more satisfying than heaven itself. 

That was a gift. We got to see and watch and listen to a woman who pointed us to the sufficiency of Jesus in all of life. Now, who are we to hold her back from that reward? The reward of being with the one she found her life’s joy in. 

So, wIth Job in our pain we say:

“The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Part 2: IN THE GARDEN

In that same hymn, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” there is a line that describes my grandmother better than I can. It says:

“I sing because I´m happy

I sing because I´m free”

She was always happy and filled with joy. Joy bubbled up out of her heart with that smile and laugh she had. The joy that came out her most of the time overflowed into song. She was alway singing because she was “happy” and “free.” Yet, that happiness and freedom did not come from something vague. It came from Jesus. 

Another hymn she’d sing to me. One she said her father loved as his favorite, was “In the Garden.” 

There is a line she loved to sing in it:

“He speaks, and the sound of his voice is so sweet

And the melody that He gives to me

Within my heart is ringing.”

The song speaks of walking and talking with Jesus and his voice bringing joy and sweetness to her life that erupts in a melody. Grandmother loved this song, but I cannot remember her singing it without her harp. 

For a long time, the music she sang was accompanied by her harp, which her husband, my grandfather, bought for her after losing their first child at an early age after years of health struggles. She saw it in a Sears catalog and he went to get it for her to cheer her up. She said it was the best thing he ever did. During that time of grieving, words were too hard to sing, so the sounds of the harp as she learned how to play it nursed her back to joy, eventually drawing the lyrics back into her heart and out of her mouth again. 

But most of you know that around the same time she learned to play the harp, arthritis began to inflict her body. Arthritis that hurt her for over five decades. It weakened her bones, destroyed her joints, and ravaged her hands. I cannot remember a time in my life when grandmother’s hands did not look like they were in pain. Every movement of her fingers was excruciating. 

Yet year after year with her body and fingers in excruciating pain, she’d set that harp on her shoulder and take those shriveled hands and she’d strum the first note of that harp, and tune her voice to the sound of it and a beautiful sound would flow from those hands on that harp and she’d begin to sing. It was a miraculous sight. That such broken hands could produce such beautiful worship. 

And that is a picture of her entire life. In her losses and her ailments, in her trials and sickness she used that brokenness, those parts of her life that only brought pain and let God use them to make a beautiful sound in the world. The pain of her life strummed the harp of her soul and brought comfort to us and was an example to us of what it looks like to offer all of yourself even your most broken parts to him. She made her pain a gift to us. A gift that showed us not just how to live with life’s hurts but how to use them for God’s glory. 

So wIth Job in our pain, we can say with joy:

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Because the pain she used to make a beautiful sound in the world is now taken away from her. She is healed. 

Part 3: SOFTLY AND TENDERLY

Lastly, what I think is the most important gift grandmother was to the world comes to me in a less familiar hymn. It’s called “Softly and Tenderly;” she would sing these lines to me and say, “listen to these lines Caleb, remember what they say:”

“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, 

calling for you and for me;”

You see, Grandmother was a voice in our lives calling us to Jesus, not just to us but to everyone. She called anyone and everyone who she could get in front of her to come to Jesus. If you went anywhere with her you’d have to schedule in extra time because if she got hold of a waitress or a cashier or a service worker she’d make time to tell them about Jesus. If you told her, “Grandmother, we have to go. We have somewhere to be;” she’d say, “I’m on God’s time not your time,” and she meant it. 

She was relentless even up to her last few weeks. We’ve been telling a story recently about how much she loves Ubers. She lived close to my Aunt Kim, but she could not drive at night anymore. So, Kim would get her an Uber back and forth to their house, and she’d say, “I love Ubers! A stranger gets paid for twenty minutes to drive me home, and they can’t go anywhere! I get a whole car ride to share the Lord with them, and it’s a new stranger every time!”

But, she wasn’t only a voice to those out there; she was a voice for us in here. She was a voice calling her children and her grandchildren to Jesus. Grandmother told everyone the truth. She would wade into our lives and tell us what we did not want to hear. She did not care if it was awkward or difficult. Her goal was to look you in the face and call you back to Christ. 

But she never threw anyone out. Her strong voice of calling people to Jesus was always accompanied by her tenderness. She never gave up on anyone in her life. She’d always take you in. She’d always be there. After looking you eye to eye telling you the truth about Jesus Christ she would wrap those little arms around you and never let go. 

She is gone now. The gift of one person in our lives without fail who told us the truth, called us to Jesus and the cross, to repentance and faith, and who did it with a love and tenderness toward us both in her words and her actions is gone now. I think this is one of the hardest things God has taken away with the loss of Grandmother. 

Grandmother believed extending Jesus to others was absolutely vital and necessary. We’ve been telling a story recently of Grandmom visiting my sister Alyssa at her college. Alyssa, Grandmother, and others went out to eat at a restaurant that required a golf cart to transport you from the parking lot to the restaurant. After dinner, while riding back to the car, she says to the young man driving the golf cart, “Son, I just cannot get out of this cart without telling you about Jesus.” It was not an option for her to keep silent about the Lord.

And it would be a disgrace; it would be to throw out everything she stood for not to call you to Jesus here today. 

There was a line she would use to call me to Jesus in that old hymn “Softly and Tenderly.” She would say, “Listen to these words Caleb; hear the voice of Jesus.”

The line reads:

“Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,

Pleading for you and for me?

Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,

Mercies for you and for me?

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,

Passing from you and from me;

Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,

Coming for you and for me.

Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised,

Promised for you and for me!

Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon,

Pardon for you and for me

Come home,

You who are weary, come home;

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,

Calling, O sinner, come home!”

You see, grandmother knew that all the gifts she was to the world could not save those whom she loved. She knew there was only one gift God has given to the world to save men and women from their sins: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died for the sins of you and me. The gift of eternal life given through the salvation of the gospel. She knew that was the gift that made her life whole and would make her death sweet. 

There is a story I told Grandmother recently that she loved to hear. I share it here today:

There was an old pastor at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia when his wife, only in her late thirties, died of cancer, leaving him with four children under the age of twelve. When driving with his children to the funeral, a large truck pulled past them in the left lane, casting its shadow over them. The pastor asked all in the car, “would you rather be run over by the truck or the shadow of the truck?” His eleven year old answered, “shadow, of course.” Their father concluded, “well that’s what happened to your mother...only the shadow of death has passed over her, because death itself ran over Jesus.”

That is what grandmother wants for you. To receive the gift of death itself running over Jesus so you can have life. She told all of you many times. Hear her voice. Remember the gift she was. And look to the one she loved most that made life and death a joy to her. 

Like I said, she is gone now. That voice is no longer with us to call us home. But even in her death she has one last thing to say. The night she passed away my uncle Tony found a set of index cards she had written on. If you knew my grandmother you knew she always wrote on index cards. Well on these cards she had written down what she wanted at her “homegoing” as she called it. We don’t know when she wrote this, but she described who she wanted to sing and what songs to play. At the bottom of the notecard she writes these words: “I’ll be waiting to see you. Stay close to Jesus.”

Even in her death she calls us to Jesus. What a gift it is to see her race run and to be with the one who she always called us to.

So, finally, we can say with Job: “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”